Maid For Murder. Barbara Colley
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him, but the only conclusion she’d come to was that Nadia had convinced herself she was doing it for Davy’s sake. What the younger woman didn’t realize, though, and what Charlotte knew from her own personal experience, was if a boy was given enough love and attention, he could grow up just fine without a father, especially a no-account father like Ricco.
Yes, she decided. She definitely needed to have that heart-to-heart talk with the younger woman.
Charlotte flipped through the Rolodex near the phone and finally located the phone number of Janet Davis, one of the three women Charlotte employed on a temporary basis.
Janet answered on the third ring. “This is Charlotte, Janet. I’m so glad I caught you at home. I apologize for such short notice, but I hope you’re free to work today.”
Janet said she was free, and Charlotte quickly gave her the address of the client’s home. “And Janet, Mrs. Dufore likes the ceiling fans dusted each time we clean her house. There’s a small ladder in the downstairs storage closet you can use. She’s also very particular about the shower in the master bath. Make sure you get rid of all the soap scum, especially around the drain.”
Charlotte ended the conversation, grabbed her purse, and fished out the keys to her van. “Thank God it’s Friday,” she muttered.
Satisfied that yet another crisis had been averted and with one last glance at the phone as if daring it to ring again, she headed for the front door. “Bye-bye, Sweety Boy,” she called over her shoulder. “Be a good little bird today and I’ll see you later.”
From his cage near the front window, the little parakeet’s answer was to burst into a series of chirps and whistles that made Charlotte smile as she pulled the front door firmly shut behind her, then locked it.
The small Victorian shotgun double that Charlotte lived in was located on Milan Street, just blocks away from the exclusive, historic New Orleans Garden District. The hundred-year-old double had been inherited by Charlotte and her younger sister, Madeline, after their parents’ untimely deaths, and each half included a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bath.
Unlike her sister, though, who had long ago sold her half of the double to Charlotte right after her first marriage, Charlotte had never felt the urge or the need to live anywhere else.
To Charlotte, the old Victorian double was more than just the home in which she’d grown up and raised her son. The location was perfect for her thriving, sometimes hectic cleaning service, since all of her clients lived in the Garden District.
Over the years, she’d thought about branching out, expanding her business to other parts of the city, but when it came right down to it, she couldn’t imagine working anywhere else.
The old-world ambience of the Garden District, with its many huge, imposing mansions, several well over a century old, was like taking a step back in time. She loved everything about the unique neighborhood—its narrow streets and hundred-year-old moss-draped oaks that shaded them, the brick sidewalks, the formal gardens, lush with ferns, azaleas, palms, and other subtropical vegetation.
Compared to the rest of New Orleans, living near and working in the Garden District was like taking a breath of country air.
Traffic wasn’t too bad until Charlotte reached the intersection of Milan and Magazine streets. Turning left onto Magazine was always tricky under the best of circumstances at that time of morning, for there was no traffic light and most of the traffic on the right side was flowing toward downtown. To make matters worse, a large delivery van was parked on the corner, effectively blocking sight of the oncoming vehicles.
When several minutes passed and traffic hadn’t budged, Charlotte knew she was in trouble. She glanced around, looking for an alternative route, then groaned. Ordinarily, she could have taken one of the many side streets and avoided the congested area, but the closest one was blocked off by a crew from the Sewerage and Water Board, patching yet another part of the century-old underground drainage system.
In the thirty-plus years since she’d founded Maid-for-a-Day, she’d always prided herself on being thorough and punctual, something that she absolutely insisted on from the two full-time and three part-time women she employed. The one thing customers hated most besides a sloppy cleaning job was having to wait for the maid to show up. Thanks to Nadia, today looked as if it were going to be one of the rare exceptions to her rule.
Charlotte reached for her cell phone and punched out the number of her client, Jeanne Dubuisson. A bit embarrassed, she explained that she was stuck in traffic and would probably be a few minutes late.
By the time Charlotte parked her van on the street that ran alongside the nineteenth-century Greek Revival mansion belonging to the Dubuissons, she noted that even with the last-minute crisis with Nadia and the snarl of work traffic, she was only a few minutes later than normal. Not that Jeanne had any particular place to go. Certainly not to an outside job.
Jeanne St. Martin Dubuisson was wealthy in her own right, having come from an old, established New Orleans family, but Jackson, Jeanne’s husband, was also one of the city’s most prestigious attorneys. Jeanne could well afford to simply do nothing. If not for her invalid mother, she might have been tempted to join her socially prominent contemporaries who spent their days running from one luncheon to another or heading up notable charitable committees.
Charlotte preferred to use her own cleaning supplies when servicing a customer. From the back of the van, she selected the various cleaners and waxes she would need and placed them in the special carrier she used. She would have to make another trip later for the vacuum cleaner.
After locking the van, she approached the fence that fronted the Dubuissons’ house. Made of cast iron and designed in the traditional cornstalk pattern, as opposed to the simpler wrought-iron designs, the fence was typical and almost exclusive to the Garden District. Beside the latch on the double-wide gate was a buzzer that Charlotte pushed. After several minutes, the lock clicked, and she opened the gate.
There were eight steps leading up to the lower gallery that bordered three sides of the old mansion. Charlotte paused on the seventh step.
“Now that’s odd,” she murmured as she turned her head slowly from one side to the other, her eagle eyes following the trail of debris that had been tracked across the normally fastidiously clean porch. Dried leaves, grass, and dirt left a trail clear across the porch, the same type of debris that she’d swept away on Wednesday, when she’d cleaned.
Oh, well, she thought. Nothing to do but sweep it all up again. Still puzzling about the scattered debris, Charlotte jumped when the front door suddenly swung open.
“Why, Miss Anna,” she exclaimed. “What on earth are you doing home?”
Twenty-year-old Anna-Maria Dubuisson was willowy thin, with shoulder-length blond hair and startling green eyes, startling and exotic because of their deep emerald color, fringed by thick, sooty lashes. She was also tall, several inches taller than Charlotte’s petite height of five feet three. In the six years that Charlotte had worked for the Dubuissons, she’d watched the gangly teenager grow into one of the most beautiful young women she’d ever met.
Charlotte narrowed her eyes. “I thought there was still another week before spring break.”
Anna-Maria flashed her a mischievous smile. “Don’t tell Mother,” she said softly, “but I skipped out. She thinks I got special permission to leave early.” She shrugged in a dismissive gesture. “I just had to come home, though. James’s father is giving a small, intimate party tomorrow night for just family and a few select friends. James thinks that’s it’s a celebration for his sister.” She lowered her voice. “It’s all hush-hush, but he’s pretty sure that Laura has been chosen as one of the maids for Rex next year, maybe even queen.” Her eyes widened. “Can you imagine being Queen of Carnival?”
James Doucet was Anna-Maria’s fiance, and it came as no surprise to Charlotte that James’s sister might be chosen as a maid or even queen. Since James’s father, Vincent Doucet, had reigned as Rex several years back and was prominent in the