Page 31 of Gumbo, Ghosts, and Deadly Deception
Hollis started up the main staircase, his footsteps deliberately silent on the old wooden steps. Claude and I watched him disappear into the shadows at the landing.
"This is my fault," Claude said quietly. "I should have told you the truth from the beginning."
I tensed. Maybe I should have gone with the man with the gun. Was Claude going to confess to murder?
"What truth?"
He was quiet for a long moment, staring up the stairs where Hollis had vanished. "I was involved with Mary Vallon in 1984."
Okay, I didn’t see that coming. "You were? Not Hollis’s dad?"
He shook his head. "No. It was me. I was in the seminary. She was nineteen, beautiful, lost. She'd run away from a bad situation with her mother and stepfather and was living in our family home. Because of the cost of upkeep it had been turned into a boarding house, like Hollis said. His dad lived there, along with some medical students. And Mary. I would go to hang out with Claude and I met Mary." He rubbed his forehead. "I thought I was helping her."
That was a new way to phrase it.
"Helping her do what?"
"Stay safe. Keep an eye on what the Circle was uncovering. Report back to my brother Claude when things got too dangerous."
I really, really wanted to ask why they were both named Claude, but this did not seem like the time. I stared at him. "You were spying on them? For the police?"
"For the city. There were concerns about the group—rumors that they were involved in something more than just séances. Some of the missing women they were investigating...their disappearances were connected to ongoing police investigations. Sensitive ones. They were sticking their noses where they shouldn’t."
"So you seduced a nineteen-year-old girl to get information?"
Claude flinched. "Not at all. It wasn't like that. I thought I was in love with Mary. I wanted to leave the seminary for her.”
Note: he didn’t. I was struggling to champion Claude as a knight in a shining white collar.
“I really thought I was protecting her. But when everything fell apart, when Francine was taken..."
"What happened to Francine?"
"I don't know!" His voice was barely audible. "That's the truth, Harper. I don't know what happened after my brother and his team picked her up for questioning. The arrest report was filed, she was released, then she disappeared. And Mary..." He trailed off.
"Mary what?"
"Mary saw me with them. She saw me talking to my brother, saw me give him information about where Francine was hiding. She realized I'd been reporting on the Circle all along." He looked up at me with eyes full of old guilt. "She left the city that next day. I never saw her again until she showed up at your aunt's funeral."
"She was at Aunt Odette's funeral?" I could have sworn she wasn’t there.
"In the back, wearing a veil. I recognized her immediately. After the service, I tried to approach her, to apologize, to explain. But she just looked at me and said, 'Some sins don't deserve forgiveness, Claude.’ Then she was gone again."
I felt like the ground was shifting under my feet. "So when Delia DuMont came to town..."
"She contacted me and invited me to the séance. Which made it clear she'd come back for a reason."
That also made me very suspicious of Claude. Did he have a reason to want to silence Delia? Was there more he wasn’t telling me?
A crash from upstairs made us both jump.
Then Hollis's voice came, sharp and urgent. "Harper! Call 911!"
Claude and I looked at each other for a split second, then both rushed toward the stairs. I fumbled for my phone as we climbed, Teddy trailing us.
We found Hollis in Room Three—Delia's room—standing over a figure sprawled on the floor near the window.
Ginger St. James lay unconscious, her flowing black robes tangled around her legs, a small cloth bag scattered across the hardwood floor. White powder dusted the area around her head.
