Cake on a Hot Tin Roof by Jacklyn Brady Page A

first. My dress was still damp from going into the pool and the wet fabric clung to me like a second skin, chilling me to the bone. I huddled a little deeper into the light blanket Sullivan had asked one of the staff to bring me, and dug around in my fog-filled head for an answer. “I think it was around nine, but I can’t swear to it. And no, I don’t know how he ended up in the pool. He was just there.”
    I knew I sounded testy, but who wouldn’t under the circumstances? There was a dead body in the swimming pool, and my uncle was missing. My aunt and mother-in-law were being interrogated in other parts of the club, as were the handful of guests and the staff who’d still been there when we sounded the alarm. I was worried about how Aunt Yolanda and Miss Frankie were holding up and starting to feel very concerned about Uncle Nestor, who seemed to have disappeared completely.
    On top of all that, I’d been running nonstop for almost twenty-four hours and I’d had a few glasses of wine at the party. Exhaustion and alcohol were seriously impairing my ability to cope.
    Sullivan glanced at his notes and ran a look over me. “You told Officer Matos that Mr. Boudreaux was drunk.”
    Usually Sullivan’s eyes are a shade of blue so light they’re almost disconcerting. Tonight they were dark and gray, like storm clouds rolling in off the Gulf of Mexico. Plus, he was using his stern-cop voice, which, in spite of the charming Southern drawl, was probably sharp enough to cut diamonds.
    “I said that I thought he was drunk,” I clarified. “And that it’s possible he stumbled into the pool on his own.”
    Sullivan lowered his notebook to the table. “And you believed that?”
    I shrugged with my face. “It’s possible.”
    “You saw the body,” he said. “That explanation might account for one wound, but Mr. Boudreaux has lacerations on his face, bruising on his temple, swelling on his cheeks, and a serious contusion on the back of his head.”
    Just thinking about that awful head wound threatened to activate my gag reflex. “He could have hit his head when he fell in.”
    “But he didn’t,” Sullivan said. “I know that just from looking at him, and I’m guessin’ you know it, too.”
    “I don’t know anything,” I said stubbornly. I didn’t believe Big Daddy’s death was an accident any more than Sullivan did, but I resented the implication that I might know more than I was telling him. “You don’t know what happened either. Don’t you need a coroner’s report or something?”
    Sullivan fixed me with a hard gray stare. “Yeah. Technically. But it’s hard to imagine Mr. Boudreaux going into the pool and hitting both the back of his head and his face on the way down. I’m bettin’ he didn’t get the wound on the back of his head from bouncing off the side of the pool.”
    “So what are you saying?”
    “I’m saying he had help gettin’ that way.”
    I pulled the blanket a little tighter and let out a resigned sigh. I thought about the statue at the side of the pool and wondered if someone had used it to send Big Daddy to his reward. I sure didn’t want the man’s death to be deliberate. Neither Miss Frankie nor Zydeco needed to be involved in another murder. Neither did I, and I hated to think of Aunt Yolanda and Uncle Nestor wasting their whole visit talking to the police. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that somebody killed him,” I said. “He wasn’t exactly the nicest guy in the world.”
    One of Sullivan’s eyebrows shot up. “What does that mean? Did you have some kind of trouble with him?”
    “Me?” I shrugged. “Not really. I only met him for the first time a few hours ago.” It was the perfect time to tell him about Uncle Nestor popping Big Daddy a couple of times, but he hadn’t asked about anyone else having “trouble” with Big Daddy. Someone was sure to tell Sullivan about the fight, but I just couldn’t get the words out. I wasn’t ready to throw Uncle