Now that I knew a spring that jabbed her straw up inside her throat?
Shudder.
We wrapped the segment, did our usual sign-off, the part where Maggie promised next week's deep dive on a decades-old disappearance in Algiers Point and I reminded everyone that no, we did not have merchandise yet, but soon. She clicked off the recording, pulled her headphones down around her neck, and reached for her coffee, which had gone cold enough that she made a face at it.
"Okay. Off mic. Tell me the real stuff."
"There is no real stuff. That was the real stuff."
"Harper."
I exhaled, and some of the performance drained out of me, the version of myself that knew there was an audience even if I couldn’t see them. "It's not just that a woman died in front of me. It's something…I can’t quite pinpoint. You did the B&B research I asked you for, right? Tell me that first, actually, I need something normal for a second."
Maggie brightened, because if there was one thing Maggie loved more than a good murder, it was a spreadsheet, and she reached over to her laptop and spun it around to show me. "Okay, so. Marigny and Bywater, like you asked. There are eleven bed and breakfasts within about a mile of Midnight House claiming some kind of haunting. Eleven. One of them says they have a ghost who reorganizes the spice rack. Another one has a Victorian woman who cries in the third-floor bathroom, which, honestly, relatable. Bad lighting does us all dirty. And the Devereux House two streets over from you claims their ghost pays the water bill early, which I choose to believe is a scheduling error and not a benevolent spirit with strong opinions about utilities."
“Why don’t I have ghosts with the power to pay my bills?”
“Technically, you do. We. Have. Ghosts. It’s a great slogan and it’s drawn a ton of guests in for you.”
"True. Plus, none of them have Teddy."
"None of them have Teddy. You're clear there. Also none of them have quite your recent body count, so." She winced. "Sorry."
"It's fine." It wasn't entirely fine, but I appreciated her trying to lighten it. "I mean, it’s been literally months since anyone died in my house. Are these places, like, legitimately old, or is it more marketing?"
"Bit of both, honestly. Some of them have real documentation, deeds going back to the 1800s, actual recorded deaths on the property. And some of them—" she made a face, "—some of them, if you dig two inches, the 'original 1850s cypress beams' were installed during a renovation in like, 1994. It's very much a spectrum of how much anybody's checking."
And there it was. The thing that had been sitting under my ribs since breakfast.
"That's what's getting to me," I said slowly. "Everybody in this city sells history. I sell history. Midnight House has a whole legacy about Aunt Odette's ghost stories, and I know for a fact some of those stories got better every time she told them, because I watched her do it. Watched her add a detail here, soften an edge there, because a good story needed shaping. But she never lied about what the house was. She never claimed provenance she didn't have. If she wasn't sure a story was true, she told you she wasn't sure. She'd say, now, some folks say this happened, and I can't swear to it, but isn't it a good one. There was always daylight between the story and the truth, and she made sure you could see it if you looked."
“Is this about these other rental places or about last night?”
"Evelyn built her whole reputation on being the last honest voice in a city that likes its history pretty. And right before she died, she said something about truth coming to light. I heard her say it. I thought it was just gala theater at the time, being dramatic in front of a chandelier. Now I can't stop turning it over."
Maggie leaned forward, elbows on her knees, all the podcast performance gone out of her voice too. She was just my friend now. "You think somebody killed her over a story."
"I think somebody killed her over what happens when a story stops being just a story. Reginald's whole career is authenticity. Restoration architecture, provenance, the paperwork behind why a house gets called historic in the first place. If Belle Rêve's history is worth what everyone thinks it's worth, that's grants, that's tax status, that's a small industry propping up half the Garden District's reputation. If it's not…" I trailed off, because I didn't actually know, I was just doing what Hollis called poking my nose in, except I was doing it out loud, to my best friend, over cold coffee. “I don’t know where I’m going with this.”
"You’re trying to suss out motive. I get it. But you don’t know about Evelyn Carrington’s personal or professional life to get there," Maggie said quietly.
“You’re right. There are also really random reasons for murder.”
"People kill for really stupid reasons. I did a whole episode on a guy who murdered his neighbor over a fence line."
"I remember. Season two. I still think about that fence."
"Everyone still thinks about that fence."
“Except that someone rigged a straw into a murder weapon. That’s not heat of the moment stuff.”
She reached over and squeezed my arm.
"For what it's worth, you being weird about houses means you’re a good person. You care about your aunt’s legacy. You care about people. You care about New Orleans."
"I do," I agreed.
“Now if we could just get you to care about a man,” she said with a grin. “Was the server hot?”
