For nineteen months she was just his housekeeper, until she realized someone was slowly poisoning the most dangerous man in New Orleans.

By 8:00 PM, the grand mansion in the Garden District felt less like an estate and more like a pressure cooker waiting to blow its lid.

Mrs. Tunney, the stern, sixty-year-old housekeeper who had run the domestic staff for two decades, cornered me in the linen closet near the service elevator. Her grey hair was scraped back into a tight bun, and her flour-dusted apron smelled faintly of nutmeg and pine cleaner.

"What did you say to Master Emilio in the conservatory?" she demanded, grabbing my wrist with surprisingly strong fingers. "Rafe came down to the kitchen twenty minutes ago screaming that the third-floor wing is to be locked down. He called two private security contractors from the docks to guard the landing."

"I told him the truth," I said, gently pulling my arm from her grip. "The air in his room was making him sick."

"Truth?" Mrs. Tunney sneered, stepping closer until her face was inches from mine. "Truth doesn't pay the mortgage on your cottage in Gretna, Etta. Truth doesn't keep quiet girls from floating face-down in the Industrial Canal. You clean wood, you polish silver, and you keep your mouth shut. That was the arrangement when I hired you."

"Did you know about the diffuser, Mrs. Tunney?" I asked, looking at her eyes.

She flinched—just a tiny, fractional retreat of her pupils—but it was enough.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she muttered, stepping back. "Dr. Prentiss prescribed that sandalwood oil himself. It was a specialized homeopathic vapor to help his lungs."

"It wasn't sandalwood oil," I replied. "It was an oil-soluble solvent designed to keep the airborne particles from settling on the furniture, forcing Emilio to inhale them every time the heating vents kicked on. That's why he only slept when I turned it off and opened his bedside drawer."

"You're crazy," Mrs. Tunney whispered, but her hands were trembling as she smoothed her apron. "Get downstairs. Rafe wants all staff accounted for in the servant dining hall by nine o'clock."

Instead of going downstairs, I waited until Mrs. Tunney vanished down the back stairwell.

I slipped along the narrow carpeted corridor toward the mansion's original architectural office—a small, windowless room hidden behind the library where old floor plans and maintenance records were kept.

Corsaro House had been built in 1858 by a cotton magnate before being bought by Emilio’s grandfather in the 1940s. It was a sprawling, three-story Greek Revival structure with thick brick walls, plaster-over-lathe interior partitions, and a complex network of abandoned dumbwaiters and ventilation risers.

I pulled open the bottom drawer of the mahogany filing cabinet, pulling out the blue-bound renovation records from three years ago—the period immediately preceding the death of Emilio’s father and the sudden onset of Emilio’s mysterious illness.

The renovation invoices were signed by a company called Pelican Restoration LLC.

I flipped through the line items: Plaster stabilization, custom plaster molding installation, synthetic sealant applications, imported aromatherapy installation.

Attached to the back of the invoice was a handwritten authorization slip.