Page 19 of Gumbo, Ghosts, and Deadly Deception
"I was planning to tell you this morning. Which is now. I gave the phone to the evidence tech." After I picked it up, played the recording, and texted it to myself.
"Harper." His voice had that particular tone that meant I was about to get a lecture. "That phone and this note is evidence in a potential homicide investigation. You can't just sit on it because it's convenient.”
"I wasn't sitting on it! I was processing it! And technically, you said it was an accidental drowning."
I debated telling Hollis about the tarot card I’d found on the steps, but that might send him over the edge. I didn’t think it was actually relevant. Delia had probably just dropped it going to bed, but I made a mental note to inspect it more carefully later.
Maggie cleared her throat. "Can we focus on the important part? Delia knew she was going to die, and she left Harper clues about some forty-year-old murder."
Hollis studied the letter again. "Francine Darrow. Where have I heard that name before?" He frowned.
“I told you about her last night."
Now he really glared at me. “No, I mean before you told me. Or unrelated to you telling me.”
Okay, then. Someone needed more sleep. "It was a missing person case from the eighties. College student, disappeared during Mardi Gras. She was staying here."
Hollis shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
"The department still has the file, right?"
"I can pull it and take a look, but I really can’t share any details because it’s probably not officially closed. Harper, I need you to promise me something. No amateur sleuthing. No following mysterious clues around your house. Even if I think it’s highly unlikely, if Delia was killed because she knew something about an old murder, then whoever did it is still out there."
"I'm not going to go looking for trouble," I said, which was technically true. I wasn't going to go looking for it. But if it happened to find me while I was, say, researching jambalaya recipes in my own house, that was hardly my fault.
I couldn’t say that I’d ever been interested in investigating a murder in real time. Maggie and I focused on researching cases that were either solved or were deep in the past or very far away from us. Or two out of the three. But this was my house. I lived here. It would be odder if I didn’t try to figure out what was going on under my own roof.
Hollis's phone buzzed. He glanced at it and sighed. "I have to go. Another case. But Harper, seriously. Be careful. And if you find anything else, call me immediately."
“Of course,” I said, as if that were a forgone conclusion and I hadn’t accidentally without malice withheld evidence. “Have a good day.”
He gave me a look like that was a dumb thing to say to a homicide detective, which it was.
After he left, Maggie and I sat in silence for a moment, both of us staring at each other.
"So," Maggie said finally. "Famous jambalaya recipe. Any ideas?"
"Aunt Odette kept all her recipes in a wooden box on top of the refrigerator. But I've been through them a dozen times since I inherited the house. Nothing mysterious about any of them."
"Maybe it's not about the recipe itself. Maybe it's about where she kept it, or how she wrote it down."
I retrieved the recipe box. It was a hand-carved cedar container that smelled like bay leaves and old paper. Inside were dozens of index cards covered in Aunt Odette's spidery handwriting: gumbo, red beans and rice, beignets, bread pudding. The jambalaya recipe was near the bottom, stained with what I assumed was either paprika or roux from years of cooking.
I pulled it out and read it. "Odette's Famous Jambalaya. Two cups white rice, one pound andouille sausage, one large onion, one bell pepper, two stalks of celery..." I stopped. "Wait. That's weird."
"What?"
"The quantities are all wrong. Two cups of rice for one pound of sausage? That would be incredibly bland. And she's got measurements for twenty servings, but the title says it's her famous recipe. She never cooked for more than eight people at a time."
Maggie leaned over my shoulder. "Maybe it's more of a code than a recipe."
I flipped the card over. On the back, in faded pencil, was a rough sketch of what looked like the floor plan of the house. But there were rooms marked that I'd never seen—including one labeled "F.D." in the space between the kitchen and the dining room.
"F.D.," I said. "Francine Darrow?"
"Or Failed Dishwasher," Maggie suggested unhelpfully.
That made me laugh. “You mean me? The dishwasher was installed in the eighties and hasn’t worked since twenty-ten.”
