Despite its age, Kendall had always found the kitchen quite charming, with its Leave It to Beaver wholesomeness.
All three brothers looked at it skeptically, clearly not sharing her enthusiasm.
“It’s wonderful. See, there’s a dumbwaiter,” she said, and showed them the small pulley-drawn elevator that had once brought hot food upstairs and returned dirty plates, laundry—and probably a small child or two, upon occasion.
At last they went outside. She showed them the original kitchen, now a caretaker’s cottage, should there ever again be a caretaker, and the smokehouse, which still smelled of smoke. Even the stables, which were in the best condition of any place on the property, still smelled of hay and horses, though Amelia hadn’t had a horse in over twenty years. They walked on to the neat row of old slave quarters, all of them two-roomed, most of them in serious need of repair. As they walked toward the last in line, Aidan said, “Someone has been living out here.”
“Really?” she said, surprised. He looked at her, and she realized he had been studying her reaction. She could tell that he believed her, but she resented the fact that he had doubted her at all.
“How do you know?” Zach asked, frowning.
Aidan kicked at a pile of broken two-by-fours. “The soup cans,” he said dryly.
“Great. And we’re detectives,” Jeremy muttered ruefully. “We would have seen them—eventually,” he added.
“Soup cans and beer bottles.” Aidan looked at Kendall. “You really didn’t know.”
It was a statement, not a question.
She shook her head. “But…Amelia said she saw lights. Maybe she wasn’t imagining things.”
“And you never checked that out?”
“Hey,” she said firmly, “I came out to be with her when she was alone and sick and afraid. I wasn’t employed by the estate. She…saw lots of things at the end.”
“Well, if she saw lights, she was right,” Aidan said, and kicked the pile again.
Then he frowned, his features tense. He bent down and started digging through the rubbish.
“Aidan, what the hell…?” Jeremy asked, as Aidan pulled something out from under the rest of the garbage.
“What is it?” Kendall asked curiously.
He held it up then, and she felt a churning in her stomach, thinking it couldn’t possibly be what it looked like.
But it was.
“A thighbone,” he said. “A human thighbone.”
3
At least they hadn’t made her stay while they called the police, Kendall thought, although they’d told her the police would certainly want to talk to her at some point.
And, she thought dryly, not even Aidan Flynn seemed to think she was responsible for the bone being there.
A human thighbone.
She felt a chill sweep through her.
She tried to convince herself that it wasn’t really shocking. Even now, so long after the storm, terrible things were still turning up. This was, no doubt, just another sad relic washed from a flooded grave. She had to dismiss her fear and unease.
Most of the time, she could make it from the Flynn plantation back to the French Quarter in thirty minutes, but that day the traffic was so bad that it was four o’clock by the time she finally made it back to her shop. She rushed in feeling guilty, since she had told Vinnie she would be back by three. His band was playing on Bourbon Street that night and needed to start setting up at five.
She let out a sigh of relief when he called out a hello to her and didn’t sound angry.
He was standing behind the counter where they brewed coffee and tea for their customers, and offered pastries from the bakery down the street. He was absentmindedly twirling a lock of his long dark hair—necessary for his job as guitarist and vocalist—and reading the newspaper. He looked up at her, his dark eyes and half-smile filled with curiosity.
“So you didn’t get in and out before the long-lost heirs appeared, huh?” he asked.
“No.”
“Details, please.”
She shrugged. “There are three of them.”
“Right, like the whole parish doesn’t know that. I’ve already met two of them, remember? Tell me something new.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
“What did you think they were like?”
“The two you’ve met are nice—the third one’s a jerk.”
“The youngest one, Zach, has given a lot of struggling musicians a break. He owns a few studios. Small places, but he lets new talent use ’em for free sometimes, and they’ve been able to get their music out there and make a little money.”
“You know more than I do, then,” she told him.
“Well, of course I do,” Vinnie said. “I—unlike some other people—have a life. I actually get out there and talk to people.”
“I’m so happy for you,” she assured him dryly.
“So the oldest brother is the dickhead?”
“He’s…”
“A dickhead,” Vinnie repeated.
“Hey, they came, I left, it’s over. It doesn’t matter.”