He was always amazed by the Krewe’s ability to find whatever was needed to make their work go smoothly.
The bridal suite—Elizabeth Roth’s room—actually consisted of a drawing room or outer area, the bedroom itself, two large dressing rooms, and these days, a small kitchenette area. Kelsey had managed to get hold of a work board. With erasable markers, she’d already started lists of what they knew and what they had learned. Staring at lists sometimes showed them what went with some other piece of information in another column. They were gathered in the drawing room, Sloan and Jane curled on the loveseat together, Kelsey at her board, and Logan thoughtful as he straddled a chair and looked at the board.
“Why should we be more prone to think that it was an accident?” Sloan asked.
“I spoke with the reverend’s deacon. He’s been battling a heart condition for a long time. It’s possible he suffered a minor heart attack and fell,” Kelsey said.
“Maybe the M.E. will be able to tell us more from the autopsy. Anything from your end, Logan?” Sloan asked.
“The reverend was well liked. No hint of improprieties or anything along that line,” Logan said. “People were sad. But many of his friends did think he was a walking time bomb. Apparently, a lot of people knew about his condition. And he liked pastries. A woman in the bakery told me that she’d designed a whole line of sugar-free desserts to help him keep his weight down.”
“Okay. No one out to get the reverend.” Kelsey wrote on the board.
“Both Elizabeth and John McCawley are entombed in the chapel,” Jane volunteered. “Along with the rest of the family.”
“The caretaker, Mr. Green, sees the ghosts all the time,” Sloan said.
“But I don’t believe a ghost is doing this,” Jane said flatly. “From what I’ve heard, both Elizabeth and John McCawley were good people—deeply in love. I do, however, have a suspicion that John’s death wasn’t accidental.”
They were all silent.
Kelsey frowned and looked at Sloan.
Sloan spoke to Jane at last. “I don’t know if we’ll ever have an answer to that. Even if we were to meet their ghosts, they might not have known themselves. What we need to figure out is if someone is killing people here now, in the present, and stop them from killing anyone else.”
“Of course,” Jane said. She rose, stretched, and walked over to the board. “Personally, I find our young host to be interesting.”
“You think that Emil Roth pushed the reverend down the stairs?” Kelsey asked.
“No, and I’m not sure why not. Except that he doesn’t seem to be into a lot of family rot. He doesn’t see himself as some kind of a lord of the castle. He’s young and rich and spoiled, and I think he knows it. I’m not even sure that he likes the castle. He definitely doesn’t like Mrs. Avery. He has to keep her here, though. It was part of his father’s will. She’s a distant relative.”
“Ah, the plot thickens,” Logan said dryly. “But why would she kill people?”
“To keep the ghost legend going? Maybe she wants some of the television ghost hunters to come in here. Great publicity for the place,” Jane suggested.
“Logan,” Sloan said, “let’s call the home office and get someone there checking into financials for this place. As far as I can tell, the Roth family has more than Emil could spend in a lifetime, even if he tried wasting every cent of it.”
“There’s no reason for the man to have killed a minister,” Kelsey said.
“Or anyone, really,” Sloan noted. “But, we’ll get a financial check done on the family and make sure. So, anyone get any dirt on the people living here?”
“Not yet. Observation may help,” Sloan said. “We’ll be dining with the master of the house, and I believe dinner is at six.”
“Ah, yes, the wedding feast.” Jane murmured.
“We can still—” Sloan began.
“No, we can’t!” Jane said quickly. “The wedding feast will be fine, without the wedding.”
“Okay, so, just take note here. We have a list of everyone in the house or on the grounds at the time of Reverend MacDonald’s death. We’ve decided that the reverend had no outside enemies. We don’t believe Emil Roth is involved, but we’ll keep looking. According to what we learned about Reverend MacDonald, it really seems likely that it was a tragic accident,” Kelsey said.
“And that would be better than the alternative,” Logan said.
Jane rose and walked over to a table where a bottle of champagne sat in a silver bowl of ice with crystal flutes around it. She didn’t make a move to open the champagne. She spun around. “I say we go down for a cocktail hour and keep talking with whoever comes near us.”
“Okay,” Sloan said, rising again.
“Sure,” Kelsey agreed.
“Who knows? Too bad there isn’t a butler here,” Logan said.
“There should have been a butler,” Jane said.