Downstairs again, I checked the casserole, but it needed about another fifteen minutes. I tried to read, but I couldn’t block my worries about Vera Cassity’s murder from my mind. I put the book aside for now and focused instead on the thoughts that wouldn’t leave me alone.

I kept coming back to Miss An’gel and Miss Dickce. What if one of them had killed Vera? For the sake of the family honor. Would an eighty-year-old scandal be that much of a scandal now? All the principals involved were long dead.

Miss An’gel and Miss Dickce might be embarrassed by the revelation that Cecilia Ducote was not their birth mother. They might be even more embarrassed to have to acknowledge Vera Cassity as a half sister.

But I couldn’t see embarrassment as a compelling motive for murder.

Then again, my family had never been as prominent as the Ducotes, though they had been in Athena about as long. I was proud of my ancestors, and I knew of some skeletons in the family cupboards that were rather embarrassing, but still.

A lot would hinge on what I found out about the wills of the three principals, Richard, Cecilia, and Essie Mae. And whether Vera could possibly be a third daughter of Richard Ducote. I think if I could have broken into the courthouse right then and there to get to the information I wanted, I would have. Patience had never been one of my virtues, particularly when the stakes were this high.

The casserole was as delicious as I expected, and I ate rather more than I should have. That was what happened when I was anxious. I fetched Diesel some of the treats he liked rather than letting him have any of the casserole. There were also onions in it, I realized, and he didn’t need onions or cheese. He for once seemed satisfied with the treats, perhaps because I pretended they came from the casserole dish.

The Ducote sisters. I couldn’t stop thinking about them. Every which way I turned, there they were. They’d orchestrated Vera’s “retirement” from public life, and I had to wonder how much else they might have orchestrated. Now that I thought about it, they had certainly been directing my footsteps. First they asked me to involve myself in the case, then they sent me off to talk to Morty Cassity. This morning they had me going to talk to Hank and Sissy Beauchamp.

Were they purposely directing me so that I wouldn’t have time to think about them as possible prime suspects in Vera’s murder?

THIRTY

The Ducote sisters were definitely devious enough to be pulling the puppet strings, and I had been all too willing to let them.

I found it difficult, though, to think of them in that way. They would have to be fine actresses to dissemble that well—the Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine of Athena.

No, I just couldn’t see them that way.

All this speculation was fruitless. With a sigh I got up and started to clear the table. Once that was done, I went to the den to watch television, but that failed to hold my interest. Diesel was not pleased when I roused him from the couch and told him I was going to bed.