"I wouldn't know," Reginald said, and went back to his paper, though I noticed he didn't turn the page. “I’ve never snored. Good airflow.”
That was kind of an odd flex, but Reginald was slightly eccentric.
“Someone to look forward to tonight,” I said cheerfully, letting Taylor have his moment, because he'd earned it and because it was genuinely, uncomplicated good news that untangled one whole thread from the mess.
If it wasn't in the bourbon, it wasn't a mass poisoning, which meant whoever had wanted Evelyn dead had wanted her dead specifically. It also meant that no one had spiked her drink. All information I’d been pretty certain on already, but confirmation was appreciated. Even if it came wrapped in Taylor doing what could only be described as a seated victory dance.
"So we can rule you out," Vivienne said, not looking up from buttering a beignet like that wasn't the most pointed sentence anyone had said all morning.
Also, who buttered a beignet? I felt all of my ancestors collectively groaning in disapproval.
Taylor's dance stopped. "Excuse me?"
"You. As a suspect. If the bourbon's clean, you've got no method. No obvious one, anyway." She shrugged. "Congratulations. You're boring."
"I have never in my life been called boring and had it feel like a compliment," Taylor said, "but today, Vivienne, today I will take it."
I refilled the coffee and let the table settle back into its rhythm, eggs and the low clatter of forks, and set my sights on Reginald, who had spent the entire exchange using his newspaper as a very thin fortress wall.
"You've been quiet this morning," I said, sliding the eggs Sardou toward him, because Aunt Odette always said a man with a full plate answered questions more honestly than a man with an empty one. I didn't know if that was actually true or if she'd just liked feeding people, but I'd never found a reason to test the theory.
"I've been reading," he said, though the paper still hadn't turned a page.
"Anything interesting?"
"Nothing that concerns Belle Rêve, if that's what you're fishing for." He finally set the paper down, folded it into a neat, precise square, the same way he did everything, and looked at me with the patience of a man who found most conversations slightly beneath him but was too well-mannered to say so outright. "You want to ask me about Evelyn. Go ahead. I'd rather you ask me directly than watch you circle around it for another twenty minutes."
Well. That took the wind out of my sideways-question strategy entirely.
"Fine," I said. "Tell me about the Bellamy-Fitch restoration,” I shot off.
"There's nothing to tell that I haven't already told you. Evelyn insisted on rebuilding a portico to match a photograph that was almost certainly staged. I told her so. She overruled me, publicly, in front of a board of people who trusted her judgment over mine because she'd been doing this longer and had a bigger name attached to it." He said it flatly, without heat. "It's not a mystery, Harper. It's a professional disagreement. Architects and clients disagree constantly. Most of them don't end up dead over it."
I should hope not. "Most disagreements don't get you humiliated in front of a historical board, either."
"No," he allowed. "That one stung. I won't pretend it didn't. But I've had two years to sit with it, and I've come to a conclusion that I imagine will disappoint you, given the company you keep." He glanced toward the window, toward Hollis's side of the hedge. "Evelyn Carrington was wrong about that portico. She will remain wrong about it for the next century, and everyone who looks at Belle Rêve's East Wing will believe she was right, because she said so with enough conviction that nobody bothered to check. That's not a motive. That's just a woman I stopped working for."
"You still sound angry."
"I sound like someone who takes historical accuracy seriously in a city that mostly prefers its history decorative. There's a difference between anger and standards, even if the two can look similar from the outside." He picked his newspaper back up, which I understood to be his version ending the conversation, the same way Dorothy Perrault had reached for her shears. "If you want a suspect with a grudge, I'd suggest looking somewhere that grudge actually required opportunity. I was on a lawn discussing bousillage for twenty minutes. I have witnesses. I have, apparently, a great deal of professional restraint. It's the only thing that's kept me employed."
It was a very tidy answer. Almost too tidy, the kind of answer a man gives when he's said it enough times to himself in the mirror that it's stopped sounding rehearsed even to him. I filed it away next to the word authenticity, next to a documented historical record, next to the strange, specific heat in his voice when he talked about a portico that had apparently occupied a great deal of real estate in his head.
Teddy chose that moment to reappear from under my chair and plant himself directly in front of Reginald's shoe, staring up with the same unblinking judgment he'd once leveled at Allison.
"He does this," Reginald said, looking down at him with something that might have been the beginning of fondness. "Sits in front of whoever's talking. Like he's grading the performance.”
“Performance?”
“Conversation.”
"Maybe he's just guarding you from a fly," I said.
"Or maybe your skunk has better instincts than the entire Garden District Historical Board," Reginald said, and went back to his newspaper, and I couldn't tell if that had been a joke.
Allison had gone quiet on the other end of the table, working her way through a beignet with the studied concentration of a woman trying very hard to look occupied. I let her sit a minute longer while I refilled Vivienne's coffee and complimented Taylor's tie for no reason other than to buy myself thirty more seconds. Then I turned my attention down the table.
"You've been picking at that same beignet for ten minutes," I said gently. "Are you okay this morning, Allison?"
