“Clever,” he said, “but no match for a far more clever Moreau. I’ll see how Aunt Hazel wants to handle the IOUs.” He turned to Brax. “How are you holding up, Brax?”
“Like Raven, I’m ready to go.”
Renay said, “I need to finish my rounds in this neighborhood to keep the ruse going. In case anything comes up about my being here...” He handed her a Montgomery Ward & Co. catalog. “I’ll be back tonight.”
“We’ll be ready.”
He departed.
“Now we don’t have to worry about whether Mama will be at the market,” she said to Brax. She was relieved. They could spend the balance of the day packing up their things and hoping nothing delayed their leaving.
“We just have to make it to tonight.”
“Yes,” she said, trying not to worry that something might impact their plan.
“I’ll go check on the exterminator,” he said.
“I’ll go with you, then come back and finish up that room.”
“We put out some bait around the base of the house,” Mr. Samson informed them. “If you’ll take me inside, I’ll put a few traps on the main floor and upstairs in her room. I’ll come back in a couple of days to check on things. If the traps get sprung before then, just put them and the dead mice in the trash bin.”
Raven took him inside. He laid his traps and left with a wave and a smile.
With Braxton’s help, Raven finished what needed doing to get the room ready for Helen. They then had lunch at the kitchen’s table. “I’ll miss this place in a way,” she told him as they ate their ham sandwiches.
He smiled. “Really?”
“Yes, even though we’ve been here less than a week, I’m leaving with some nice memories. The bath salts, the undoing of my buttons—”
He snorted a laugh.
“Alice. We can read more on the train ride home,” she said. Then as if realizing home meant different locations for them, she said, “I guess not.”
“Unless you’re going with me to Boston.”
She shook her head. “I have to go to New Orleans and check on the family.”
Come tomorrow, their time together wouldend. She’d see him again at the wedding, but after that, irregularly at best, and more than likely he’d be with the woman he’d chosen to be his wife, one who fit into his Boston world in all the ways she did not.
A loud male voice startled them. “What are you doing in here! Who are you!”
They turned. Raven recognized him immediately from the portrait on the wall in the main house and assumed Brax did, too. Helen’s philandering husband, Aubrey Stipe.
Brax stood. “We work for Miss Helen. I’m Evan Miller. This is my wife, Lovey. I recognize you from the portrait on the wall. Pleased to meet you.”
The greeting was not returned. Instead, he eyed them suspiciously. Had he found the contents missing from his box? She’d had Brax hide the papers in the privy for safekeeping and was glad she had.
“What happened to Dahlia and Sylvester?”
“Her husband has a sick relative,” Brax replied. “They’ve gone home to Texas. Your wife hired us a few days ago.”
“Where is Helen?”
“At her sister’s. She’ll be back in a couple of days. She wanted to escape the mice.”
His confusion was plain.
“The house appears to be infested,” Brax continued. “An exterminator was here earlier and laid some traps. Miss Helen asked my wife toclean the upstairs bedrooms because we think the mice came from one of them.”