of us at the craft booth. She even got your mother.”
His look of dismay was comical. “Of course she did.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Wednesday was a whirlwind of activity. Ida Belle, Gertie, and I made yet another trip to New Orleans—this time to give our official statements. Detective Casey had seemed a little miffed over being upstaged, but finally thawed as I laid out the evidence we’d collected and how it had finally all come together because of some random statements by other people and a kid’s drawing at an arts and crafts booth.
Brigette wasn’t talking but there was so much evidence against her, she didn’t really have to. Casey told us the painting had been confiscated and my suspicions were correct. The original painting had a layer of special varnish over it and then had been painted over to disguise the valuable—and stolen—item underneath. She had a replacement for the prop shipped to the buyer and just swapped them out when they came to collect. After collection, the buyer had an artist delicately strip the fake painting from the top, revealing the perfectly intact painting below. Brigette had been smuggling art in plain sight and the cops suspected it wasn’t just limited to paintings. Vases and other high-end items could easily be camouflaged with removable coatings and moved as props for the play.
My theory about Brigette’s finances had been correct as well. Emmaline’s comments about the real reason her father had stepped away from his public life combined with Mannie’s comment about the good interest rate Brigette had on her condo mortgage, her constant complaints about the lack of budget for the play, and her diverting conversation about displaying the family emeralds all added up to Brigette being broke, the emeralds being long gone, and Brigette not the least bit happy about any of it. She’d been raised with a certain lifestyle and had figured out a way to get back to it.
Unfortunately, Gil had decided to step into his role of a detective in real life and had gone up against someone who had no problem killing to hide her side business. Getting into character had been a deadly choice. His curtain drop, you might say. And poor Gwyn was the real tragedy in all of it. She’d gotten caught up in something she knew absolutely nothing about and had died because of it.
Tiffany had been released and had apparently been filled in on the reason why because I had five phone messages thanking me before I finished up at the police department. The captain sat in when I gave my statement and I saw a tiny hint of grudging respect as I laid out my case. Casey worked to hold in a smile at his occasional grunting and when I was done, he gave me a nod, then left.
“That’s high praise,” Casey said. “I think he likes you. Not other PIs, mind you. Just you. You know, you’re an excellent investigator. I know that wasn’t really what you were trained for but your instincts and your ability to put things together is stellar. Have you ever considered law enforcement?”
I shook my head. “I don’t like rules.”
She laughed.
It was after lunch before we finished with the New Orleans police, but none of us felt like stopping to eat before heading home. We were all exhausted and quite frankly, were done with visiting the city for a while. Ida Belle had left ground beef out to thaw, predicting that we might want to collapse at home once we were done, so we all headed to our respective homes and pulled together the odds and ends from our pantries. By midafternoon, we were sitting in my backyard, drinking beer, with burgers on the grill. I’d let Merlin out of jail since we were all outside and he was perched on a wide limb on the oak tree, looking overly pleased with himself.
“You know what’s still outstanding, right?” Gertie said.
“The Headless Horseman,” Ida Belle said. “That wasn’t Brigette. She was thrilled when Gil’s death was considered a carjacking. No way she was drawing more attention to it. She’d almost committed the perfect crime.”
“She should have been smart enough to take a couple items from Gil’s house when she broke in to make it look like a robbery,” Gertie said.
“I thought about that too,” I said. “I assume she was hurrying to get out as fast as possible before she was seen, and maybe Tiffany started to stir and she panicked and left before finishing