How to Crash a Killer Bash

by Penny Warner

  “Darn cats,” I whispered as Thursby fled the downpour of props. While I managed to stay upright, everything else went flying, including my knockoff Dooney & Bourke purse. After I cleared a path to the kitchenette, I made myself a cup of pomegranate tea and sank into the couch. Too wired to sleep, I began making a list of anyone who might have wanted to see Mary Lee Miller with a dagger in her back.

  Other than Delicia, I came up empty. This was going to take a little more investigating if I hoped to find anyone else who had a motive. It had to be someone at the party—someone who knew Mary Lee was alone in the mural room, waiting for Act II. That left me with a handful of viable suspects, many of them my coworkers. Not to mention my own mother.

  Great. All I had to do was figure out which one it was.

  With little or no help from Detective Melvin or the San Francisco Police Department.

  Or Brad?

  My cell phone rang, playing the tune from “Halloween.” I looked at the caller ID.

  Unknown.

  I said, “Hello?”

  No answer.

  The perfect ending to a perfect night.

  Chapter 6

  PARTY PLANNING TIP #6

  Low lights and flickering candles offer a nice atmosphere for your Murder Mystery Party. Just try not to burn down the party venue. Guests dislike going home with singed eyebrows and soot-covered costumes.

  Morning comes earlier to Treasure Island than it does to the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m sure of it. Surrounded by water, the island catches the first rays of sun reflecting off the bay, which spill directly into my bedroom window.

  Sunday morning I awakened to blinding light, in spite of the mini-blinds, plus the prickly massage of cats kneading my legs. Throwing off the covers before the cats could draw blood, I sat up in my Tweety Bird tank top and matching elastic shorts that served as pajamas, rubbed the sleep out of my head, and made tracks for the tiny bathroom to take a much-needed shower.

  As the warm water rained down on me, visions of last night’s disaster popped into view. The murder. The police. The arrest of Delicia. I rinsed off quickly, dried myself hard enough to cause rug burns, and dressed in fresh black jeans and a T-shirt that read, “I don’t have a short attention span. I just . . . Oh look, a chicken . . .” A latte would help control my ADHD, and hopefully channel it into something more akin to multitasking on speed.

  I headed for my small kitchen to feed Thursby, Cairo, and Fatman gourmet cat food. After rinsing a cinnamon raisin bagel down my throat with a large latte, I grabbed my purse and roller blades and drove to the office a few blocks away. When I needed a physical and mental break, skating the path around the island helped clear my head better than Adderall any day.

  There was only one other car in the lot when I arrived—Delicia’s tiny yellow Smart Car. I’d given her a ride to the museum last night—she hated driving in the city—so she’d left her car behind. I tried the door handle—locked.

  I walked up the rickety steps of the barracks office to the paint-peeling door and slipped my key in the lock. The large front office served as a waiting room for the several small businesses in the building. It sported an old gray metal desk left behind by the navy, a garage-sale sofa with a fake-fur slipcover, and a disconnected landline phone that was just for show. When we needed to impress important clients, we took turns posing as the office secretary.

  This was actually my second office building. The first had burned down a few weeks earlier, and we’d moved to an identical one next door. I had the first office beyond the entry room, on the right. The office directly opposite me had recently been rented by Brad Matthews, who owned a crime scene cleaning business, but I suspected that was only a part-time job. What he did at other times was still a mystery. I’d recently learned he had connections with the police department, the mayor’s office, and high-level companies who seemed to hire him for more than just cleaning up bodily messes.

  Yeah, he was hot. And he’d helped me out a few times. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I didn’t fully trust the guy.

  I sat down in my office swivel chair, pulled out the party form from my purse, and added it to the top of my cluttered desk. According to my notes, I had over two hundred suspects for the murder of Mary Lee Miller.

  That narrowed it down.

  I switched on my laptop and skimmed the thirty-plus e-mails waiting for me. Most of them related to upcoming parties, with demands like “Could you make all the balloons blue—it’s my son’s favorite color!!” and “I’m allergic to shellfish, so NO crab or shrimp!!!”

  Ignoring the ones that weren’t pressing, i.e. all of them, I typed in Mary Lee Miller’s name. Brad had told me to “study the victim,” which he said he’d learned from cleaning up after a few homicides.

  Several hundred links popped up for the name Mary Lee Miller. Great. Reading all the entries would take most of the day—time I didn’t feel I had. After weeding out the Mary Lee Millers that had no connection to the museum and skimming the rest—ADHD makes me good at skimming—all I learned was how much money Mary Lee had made for the de Young and what an incredible philanthropist she was. I scanned more articles, quoting her “vision” for the museum, her “love of art and artifacts,” her charitable fund-raising parties, and her pleasure at having a future wing of the museum named after her.

  The woman was a saint, at least in the museum community.

  Who’d want to kill someone like that?

  I kept searching for something unusual, something more—or less—than sainthood. It wasn’t until I discovered a news article written several years ago for a small newspaper that I found any kind of dirt. The interview had been with Jason Cosetti, Mary Lee’s first ex-husband and father of her son, Corbin.

  “When she left me, she took everything,” Jason was quoted saying, “including our son. I never saw a dime of the money we earned the year we were together. She may have made a fortune for her museum, but the only other person who got anything from her was her lawyer. And he didn’t have to live with her to get it.”

  Apparently Jason wasn’t a fan. I wondered what their relationship status was today.

  I had just added his name to my notes when someone tapped me on the shoulder, startling me. I spun around to find a giant marshmallow man standing behind me. I slapped my chest in relief.

  “You’ve got to stop sneaking up on me,” I said to Brad, who looked like an alien, if not a marshmallow man, in his white Crime Scene Cleaners jumpsuit.

  “I didn’t sneak up on you. You were so engrossed in whatever you’re doing, I guess you didn’t hear me come in.” He pulled open a folding chair and sat opposite me. “Find out anything?” He nodded toward the computer screen.

  Still miffed at being ignored last night, I shrugged noncommitally.

  “I haven’t known you long, Presley, but I do know you’re not going to let up on this thing with Mary Lee. So what have you found?”

  I turned to the screen. “Well, as a matter of fact, I’m following your advice.”

  “What’s that—leave it to the police?”

  “No, cherchez la victime—look at the victim. I’ve been Googling Mary Lee Miller.”

  He nodded. “I should learn to keep my mouth shut. So did you find anything?”

  “That she was a saint—at least to the museum crowd. And that her ex-husband might disagree. They were divorced soon after Corbin was born. She was making more money than he was, so he asked for spousal support. Didn’t get it. She even took their son, claiming Jason was away too much and unavailable to share custody.” I looked at Brad. “Think he’s still holding a grudge after all these years?”

  “Anything’s possible, but that’s a long time to bottle up revenge. Any chance Jason was at the party?”

  “Not sure,” I said. “He wasn’t on the guest list, but I suppose he could have sneaked in, wearing a costume like everyone else.”

  We heard the front door to the office building creak open and then slam
shut. I expected to see one of the other business tenants—Berkeley or Raj or Rocco. Anyone but the person who entered the hallway: Detective Melvin.

  As usual he was dressed impeccably, not a slicked-back hair out of place. He’d brought along a burly officer in uniform who stayed quiet in the detective’s shadow.

  “Oh shit,” I said under my breath. “Now what?” Ever since the detective and I butted heads over another murder case a few weeks ago, we’d been civil to each other, but it had been an effort.

  Brad, on the other hand, greeted him like an old friend. He stood up, and they shook hands and briefly discussed their last golf game. I never quite understood Brad’s relationship with the GQ-style cop.

  Detective Melvin finally acknowledged me and nodded curtly. “Ms. Parker.”

  “I think you can call me Presley, Detective, after all we’ve been through.”

  He ignored my comment and glanced over at Delicia’s tiny office next to mine. The walls that connected our offices were made of wood on the bottom half and glass on the top. I watched the detective stretch his neck and do a superficial scan.

  “Have you found the killer yet?” I asked, getting to the point.

  He gave me a condescending smile and said nothing.

  I pressed him. What did I have to lose? “So what are you doing here, Detective? You know Delicia didn’t kill Mary Lee, and neither did my other office mates, even though they also played parts at last night’s event. Shouldn’t you be looking for her murderer instead of peeking into people’s office windows?”

  Letting his eyes pass coolly over me, Detective Melvin headed to Delicia’s office.

  I stood up. “Wait a minute. What are you doing?”

  Melvin slipped his hand into his suit jacket and pulled out a paper that was becoming all too familiar to me: a search warrant. Several weeks ago he’d brought one to search my own office.

  I crossed my arms and called after him, “You’re wasting your time, Detective. You’re not going to find anything incriminating in there, like the murder weapon.”

  He tried the door handle, then felt along the top of the door frame, obviously searching for a key. Finding nothing, he turned to me. “Any chance you’ve got a key to this office, Ms. Parker?”

  “Nope,” I lied. Delicia had a habit of locking herself out of her office, so we’d made duplicates and exchanged them soon after we’d moved in.

  Brad raised an eyebrow at me. I raised one right back at him.

  Melvin signaled for the burly officer, who stepped over to Dee’s door and pulled out a key.

  “How did you get her key?” I asked.

  Brad leaned over to me and whispered, “It’s not her key.”

  I watched as the cop began to twist the key inside the lock.

  “What’s he doing, then?” I whispered back.

  “It’s called ‘bumping’ or ‘rapping’ a lock. Works pretty well, especially with older cylinder locks. Not everyone can do it. Takes practice.”

  Brad narrated the action as the big guy continued working. “In a bump key—some call it a nine-nine-nine key—all the cuts are as deep as they can be. It fits the lock, even though the cuts are different.”

  A key like that would be handy to have. “Where did he get it?”

  Brad smiled. “Well, you can’t just go to your local lock-smith and ask him to make you one. I suppose you could always file it down yourself.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “Let’s just say I was a weird kid,” he said. “So anyway, you insert the key, then pull it out one click. Then you jiggle it while you tap on the back end.”

  The officer did exactly what Brad said. After inserting the key, he pulled it back a fraction of an inch. He continued pushing and pulling on the key, then struck the end of it with his nightstick. With a last turn, the door opened.

  “Oh my God,” I said, stunned at having witnessed a professional break-in.

  “You want the physics behind it?” Brad asked.

  “No, thanks. If I need to break into an office, I’ll check Wikipedia.”

  “Good, because I didn’t do so well in that class. Has something to do with the energy from the strike transferring from the key to the tumblers, causing them to jump.”

  “In other words, breaking and entering,” I said.

  The officer stepped aside, allowing Detective Melvin to enter Dee’s office. Once inside, he began riffling through papers, opening drawers, and scanning the scattered messages that lay on her disaster of a desk. As an often-out-of-work actress, Dee usually had her desk cluttered with résumés, head shots, and messages from her agent.

  Brad and I watched through the doorway as Melvin sat down in Dee’s chair and switched on her notebook computer. The detective’s large fingers had difficulty working the small keyboard, and he repeatedly had to backspace and retype commands. After several minutes of punching keys, he frowned and closed the cover.

  I wondered if he’d found anything significant. Or incriminating.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to find out. He unplugged the computer, gathered up the cord, and carried it out of the office. The burly officer followed him down the hall, without locking the door behind him.

  “Can he do that?” I asked Brad. “Just take her computer like that?”

  “With a warrant he can do just about anything.”

  “Why do you want her computer?” I called to the detective as I followed him toward the reception area.

  “Sorry. That’s confidential.”

  “But—”

  He stopped and turned to me. “But what, Ms. Parker?”

  I glared at him, then spun around and returned to my office to pout. I heard him call out “Later” to Brad, just before the front door closed.

  “Humph,” I fumed.

  I was certain that Detective Melvin, rather than trying to find the real killer, was building his case against Delicia. What had he found on her laptop? Something like “I’m going to kill Mary Lee Miller” written in a giant red letters using a fancy Gothic font?

  I hoped not. But Delicia had a flare for the dramatic. That’s what made her such a good actress. And now, no doubt, a good suspect. I had to talk to her and find out if there was anything Melvin might have found on her computer.

  Only problem was, she might not be speaking to me at the present. Mainly because she blamed me for ratting her out to the cops.

  Until I could get to the jail, I’d spend every minute I had trying to work up a viable list of suspects. Top of my list was Mary Lee’s embittered ex-husband, Jason Cosetti.

  All I had to do was find him.

  I returned to Delicia’s unlocked office to rummage through anything Detective Melvin had left behind. The first thing I wanted to check was her cell phone, but it was nowhere in sight. Impounded? I’d hoped to find a phone number for Corbin in order to track down his father. The only contact I had for him was e-mail—too slow.

  I glanced around the desk. No Rolodex. No address book. Not even a sticky note with a recently dialed phone number on it. With all the cell phone apps, no one wrote on paper anymore.

  I was about to return to my own office when I noticed a yellow piece of paper stuck to the bottom of my shoe. I lifted my foot. A sticky note. It must have fluttered to the floor during the detective’s whirlwind visit, and I’d stepped on it. I snatched it off and found a phone number.

  I pulled out my cell phone and dialed it.

  “North Beach Pizza . . . ,” an accented voice said. Sounded like he said “pizzer” instead of “pizza.”

  I hung up.

  Finding Corbin’s number like that would have been way too easy.

  But it gave me an idea.

  I pulled open her top drawer. Jackpot. It was filled with a sticky collage of yellow notes, all with phone numbers on them. And a few with names.

  I tried the top five and reached a movie theater, a Chinese takeout restaurant, a hair salon, and a clothing boutique before I h
eard a familiar voice

  “Yeah?”

  “Corbin?” I asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “This is Presley Parker.”

  “Yeah?”

  Not the response I expected.

  “I’m . . . so sorry about your mother.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Uh, I wondered if I could talk with you. About Delicia.”

  A moment of silence, then, “Yeah, I guess. She all right?” His voice was flat and unemotional. A sign of depression, no doubt.

  “I don’t know. That’s why I want to talk with you. I think we can help her. Would you be willing to meet me?”

  “Where?”

  I mentioned the Bittersweet Café on Fillmore. The place was like a crack house for my two addictions—coffee and chocolate. Might as well get a fix while interrogating the dead woman’s son. We agreed to meet in an hour. I thanked him, he said, “Yeah,” and we hung up. I hoped he’d be a little more talkative once I filled him up with caffeine.

  I closed my laptop and gathered my purse, suspect list, and cell phone. I’d barely made it into the hall before Brad called, “Hey, where’re you going?”

  “NYOB,” I called back, showing off my latest texting vocab word.

  Brad laughed at my attempt to sound hip. “Dyslexic, aren’t you? It’s NOYB.”

  I turned around and made a face at him.

  “So . . . ,” he said.

  “So what?”

  “So where are you going?”

  “I thought I made that clear.”

  He sidled up to me—close, really close—causing me to blush. He slowly reached out a hand and touched the front of my shirt. I couldn’t breathe. Pulling his hand back, he held a black cat hair in his fingers. Thursby. I felt my entire body heat up like a live volcano.

  “Listen, I’d be glad to help,” he said, brushing the hair from his fingers. He glanced over my shirt as he talked. Looking for more cat hairs? Or something else? “I’ve got connections, you know. I uncover a lot of dirt in my business.”