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“Petite Chambord,” Jan said. “Once the largest in the area, lost to fire in 1871.”

Maggie looked at Jan in surprise. “Nice. I’m impressed.”

Jan shrugged and grinned. “What can I say? I gotta have something to put in my Cajun Cuties newsletters.”

The van made its way into Pelican and found an empty parking spot in front of Fais Dough Dough. Maggie jumped out and was dropping coins into the meter when she saw Rufus “Ru” Durand saunter toward her. Ru was the Pelican chief of police, a patronage job that few residents gave much thought to since crime in the town was so infrequent. Ru, who was the color and shape of unbaked bread dough, was oblivious to his lack of importance. But fortunately for Pelican, his arrogance and sense of superiority were kept in check by what many locals considered a genetic streak of laziness.

“Hey, Maggie.”

“Hey, Ru.”

Ru took the nightstick he was swinging like a Keystone cop and pointed it at the meter where Maggie was parked. “That got changed, ya know. Only half an hour.”

“Yes, I do know,” Maggie checked her phone. “It’s 8:54. I’ll be back at 9:24.”

“So will I,” Rufus said. “Ready to write you a ticket at 9:25.”

Maggie clenched her teeth and managed to refrain from a nasty comeback. She knew Ru was taunting her. Enmity between her family and the Durands went back more than one hundred fifty years. “Not to worry, Ru. I’ll be right on time.”

“If you say so.” Rufus turned to the Cuties. “Enjoy your all-too-brief visit to the bakery, ladies. And Maggie, tell Lia that I think of free coffee and croissants more as a thank-you than a bribe. I’m just sayin’.”

Rufus winked at her and strolled off. Jan glared at his back. “In New Jersey, we have words for guys like him.”

Maggie laughed. “I bet they’re the same words we have in Louisiana. I’m sorry about that. Let’s just forget it ever happened and buy us some homemade treats!”

The Cuties happily followed her into the store. They shopped up a storm at both Bon Bon and Fais Dough Dough, grabbing many of Maggie’s souvenirs as well as Lia’s treats. While they loaded up their baskets, Maggie filled Lia in on the horror that was the Clabbers.

“What did you do when he said breakfast was ‘predictable’?”

“I responded politely and then spent the rest of breakfast fantasizing about putting my grapefruit knife in just the right position so that if someone ‘accidentally’ tripped Hal Clabber, he’d be impaled by it.”

Lia laughed. “Oh, it’s gonna be a long week. I think you could use some ice cream.”

“We all could. I’ll take a gallon of Brown Sugar. It’ll go great with Mom’s Bananas Foster tonight.”

Lia tried to press the ice cream on Maggie as a gift, but Maggie insisted on paying her cousin for it. Then she and the Cuties drove home as quickly as possible. Rain was certain to come by afternoon or evening, and she hoped the summer storm wouldn’t bring with it a power outage. The Crozats had a backup generator that kicked in pretty quickly, but there was always that transitional moment when guests panicked.

Maggie and Gran’ spent the afternoon helping Ninette prep for dinner and sharing notes about the week’s guests. All three agreed that the Clabbers were awful, the Ryker kids cute, the Butlers bland, the Cuties entertaining, and Georgias One through Three harmless.

“For my money, the most interesting guest in this lot is the handsome Mr. Bruner,” Gran’ said. “He’s quite refreshing for a Texan.”

“What does that mean?” Ninette asked as she put a pot of water up to boil.

“He doesn’t wear cowboy boots, which even the most sedentary of his fellow statesmen insist on tromping around in. And so many of the Texans who come here can’t stop bloviating about how great their state is. Remember that one man? Every time you put out a flower or a piece of fruit, he would say something like, ‘We have roses the size of your head in Texas.’ Or ‘I once grew a cucumber that was as big as a basketball player’s forearm.’ That was my favorite. I wanted to say, ‘Do you live in a state or a nuclear testing site?’”

The others couldn’t help but laugh at this. “I’ll tell you one thing, though,” Gran’ continued. “He’s got a story, that Kyle. Good looking, obviously successful—he had one of those high-end credit cards, didn’t he, Ninette?”

“That’s nobody’s business, Charlotte,” Ninette chastised.

“Well, he did, I saw it. But no wife, no family? And he didn’t set off my gaydar. Trust me, there’s a story.”

Maggie raised her eyebrows. “You know about ‘gaydar’?”

“I doff my cap to the Internet.”

Maggie excused herself from dinner prep to set the table. At five, the guests assembled for happy hour. Tug mixed Sazeracs, and Kyle once again helped serve.

“Oooh, milady would love a refill,” piped up Beverly Clabber, who was buzzing from the first round Maggie had delivered to her mere moments before. She gave her husband a flirtatious poke in the ribs. “What about you, milord?” Hal Clabber grunted what sounded like a yes.

“At the rate those two are inhaling food and beverage, we’ll be lucky if we break even on them,” Maggie muttered to her father as he mixed the couple’s second round. He put a finger to his lips, simultaneously shushing her and suppressing a smile.

Ninette stuck her head in from the kitchen. “Dinner’s ready.”

A loud clap of thunder startled everyone, and then the skies opened. Rain poured down outside and was hurled against the house by wind gusts. The lights flickered for a moment but then regained their power.

“Fantastic,” Cutie president Jan enthused. “Nothing like a Cajun Country summer storm.”

Fortunately, despite the initial noisy thunderclap, the storm wasn’t as close as it seemed, although Maggie could tell it was heading their way. As they dined, the guests filled each other in on their day’s activities. Hal Clabber never said a word, and welcome as his silence was, Maggie began to wonder if something might be wrong with him. Gran’ also seemed to notice the change in his behavior.

“Mr. Clabber, you’re awfully quiet tonight,” she said. The man responded with a grunt.

“Hal’s not feeling great,” Beverly explained. “The humidity here really gets to him.”

“Why don’t we have our liqueurs in the front parlor?” Gran’ suggested. “It’s a bit cooler there.”

“Thanks, but we need to get our boys to bed,” Carrie Ryker said. Her sons groaned and protested, while their sister snarked her refrain about how embarrassing her entire family was.

“And if it’s okay, we’re gonna take it to our room,” Shane Butler said. Emily entwined her fingers with her husband’s. The couple’s lust for each other was starting to annoy Maggie, who wouldn’t have admitted to her best friend that it had been more than a year since she’d even made out with someone.

The Rykers and Butlers took off, and the Crozats herded the rest of the guests into the front parlor. The storm was moving closer to Pelican, with less and less time between lightning strikes and thunder booms. Maggie could tell that some of the guests were feeling jittery. After about fifteen minutes of forced small talk, all conversation petered out. Maggie chose a soothing classical playlist from the bed and breakfast’s iPod, hoping it would distract everyone, but with the storm practically on top of Crozat, even she felt edgy.

“It’s not a hurricane, is it?” Suzy asked after a particularly loud boom.

“No, just a typical summer storm,” Tug said with a reassuring smile. Suddenly, a fierce crackle and loud explosion of sound made everyone jump, and Crozat went completely dark. The room filled with chatter from the nervous guests.

“It’s okay, we have a generator. It’ll come on any minute,” Maggie called to everyone. But the generator didn’t come on, and the guests stumbled around in the dark.

“Dad, what’s wrong?” she asked as Tug pulled out backup flashlights that she quickly distributed.