Page 85 of Suspicions on the Stage
After I got Iggy’s texts earlier, I didn’t really have a better idea of what this call is going to look like. He said he’d fill me in tonight, but that does jack shit for the stupid phone call I have to makenow. His text was plain, to the point, and had not a drop of personality to it. I don’t know why I get my hopes up that he’ll one day drop the mask and say something truly honest, sowe can move on from his shitty behavior at the beginning of our association.
Maybe I just enjoy the taste of my own disappointment; it’s got a mineral tang, like licking old batteries.
That’s a bad choice from long ago, and I don’t have time to jaunt down youthful idiocy’s memory lane. I need to take a look at this file he uploaded, along with Channing’s additions from her searches, before I dial. Sighing, I scoot forward in my chair and lean in to look at the screen of my laptop reluctantly.
I click the first link open, wincing at the gaudy Beauregard family crest that floods my monitor—three screaming harpies perched on a blood-red theater mask.
Real subtle, guys.
The matriarch’s name is Regina Adelaide Beauregard, daughter of old Southern money and bloodlines. She’s titled as the ‘Queen Regent’ of the country’s largest private performing arts endowment, but I doubt that’s actually what she does. Regina was the granddaughter of questionable relatives during a less enlightened time, and yet she’s somehow kept the family name off of the tongues of people rightfully decrying that age.
Likely because the file says she’s a witch, though what her gifts are is speculated but unproven.
The dossier I’m in was painstakingly assembled by Channing, but it reads like the cautionary half of a supernatural period novel. Bred and trained for debutante perfection, debuted at seventeen, married off to a less-than-thrilled old-money heir named Irving Livingston at nineteen. Since her name was the more revered, they kept it—which shows people can fucking accept random chosen names whenever the hell they want, evenin the 1800s. Shaking off my irritation at the world today, I read on.
By thirty, she’d orchestrated her husband’s ‘tragic and mysterious’ disappearance on a Zambian safari, seized the family business from the shadows, and banished all his illegitimate spawn with a scorched-earth efficiency that made the Stonewall march through the South look tame. Now, people whisper her name with something like terror because they know she still holds the reins to the empire in secret.
If I didn’t suspect her of being awful, I might actuallyadmirethis woman, for fuck’s sake.
Regina is eighty-one now, and the rumor mill says she eats men alive and spits the bones into the foundation of her summer homes. I don’t know if that’s a ‘witch’ rumor or a metaphor, which only makes her seem cooler. She’s not, though, according to everyone I’ve spoken to, so I have to stop fan-girling over this crotchety old hag. But who could blame me withthisresume?!
I stare at her portrait on the screen—bleached cotton hair, pearls like teeth, a black dress with a throat-high collar. Hell, I can almost feel her assessing me back, calculating my caloric value as we face off. The Beauregard matriarch is definitely someone who flew in the face of convention and gave it the middle finger when women just didn’tdothat kind of thing.
My hesitation comes down to Rialto Beauregard, her youngest, whose body we found last night on stage at the campus theater named after their family. Rialto wasn’t well-liked, like most of his kin, but he was barely even a philanderer by Beauregard standards. His sin was pride and entitlement, but I still don’t think either of those things got him killed. No, his death was amessage for us, and I have to relay the news of it to a woman who is thought to eat men for snacks.
Is this why people give me a wide berth? Because I killed Magnus for reasonable, justifiable shit? Probably.
I know his murder will not go over well with Lady Regina, whose preferred method of vengeance involves centuries-old bourbon, large checks, and probably actual assassins. That’s how all the super rich dicks handle things and I have enough problems as it is. But I don’t have a choice and I have to do this before the media gets a hold of the story.
Channing’s head pops in at the door, her bobbed hair pointedly neat and her glasses catching every cold morning sunbeam in the room.
“Are you ready for this, boss?” she says, eyeing my bourbon with naked envy.
I consider lying, but Channing knows me well enough to be skeptical. “Not even slightly. But give me five minutes, then buzz in to place the call. You got her personal information, yes?”
She waves a single, creamy envelope, sealed with wax. “This was in his student file, if you believe it. What the fuck were the admissions people doing letting her keep her contact stuff in this form? Insanity.”
“We better keep it off the record. Neither of us knows why the board or anyone here allowed that to happen, so we might want to investigate before we dump her stuff into the real database.”
She might threaten to curse my fucking descendants or something if we do.
“Got it, Morgana. I’m going into the lobby, but your phone will buzz when you need to pick up.”
“You’re the only reason I haven’t lost my mind yet, but you need to wait until I open this damn thing,” I say, which makes her laugh. Channing is unflappable now, and was totally wasted in her previous position. I could put her in charge of the universe and sleep like a baby.
I peel the wax from the envelope. Inside, there’s a card embossed with the Beauregard seal. There is an international prefix on the number, which is useless since the address is just outside Savannah. Maybe this is the only way you get Regina Adelaide Beauregard’s information… in card form from an appropriate representative? Who the hell knows.
“Take this and keep it out of the public eye,” I murmur as I hand it to my assistant.
I steel myself as she leaves by thinking of Rialto’s body, and the ridiculous, sad little flower arrangement someone has already left at the theater doors. The university will want to kiss Regina’s ass to keep her from suing, but I know that’s not the biggest concern. There’s no elegant way to break a mother’s heart, even if that mother has the emotional range of an ice sculpture.
The death of her child qualifies as just such an event.
I pick up the phone when it buzzes. Channing’s bourbon is within arm’s reach; my nerves have stopped rattling as I slide into professional Morgana-mode.
It rings once, then again. On the third ring, a man picks up. His voice is gravel wrapped in silk. “Beauregard Estate. Reginald speaking.”
There is a hush on the line, so deep I can practically hear the magnolia blossoms dropping in the background.
