by Penny Warner
Delicia never swore. She used every word but the actual expletive. I figured that was because she’d never really had a reason to. Just wait until she’d been fired from her job, lost her longtime boyfriend, run through five fathers, dealt with a crazy mother, and become a murder suspect.
But that was a good question. Where was Rocco?
He’d pestered me relentlessly to cater the mayor’s event the moment I’d been hired. As soon as I agreed, he’d been in the kitchen twenty-four/seven. Being the star of his own local access cooking show wasn’t enough for this culinary artiste. He was constantly cooking up ways to make the leap into the Food Network fry pan. He saw the mayor’s wedding as a way to highlight his gastronomy—and frost his résumé.
Now, with this chocolate fiasco, was he out of the frying pan and into the fire? Enough with the food metaphors, I decided.
I held up the newspaper and skimmed the article to the point where I’d left off in a huff.
MAYOR’S SURPRISE WEDDING BACKFIRES—BRIDE BOLTS!
By Roberta Alexander
Last evening, blah-blah-blah, Mayor Davin Green blah-blah-blah, Ikea Takeda . . . threw her glass of bubbly . . . stormed off . . .
When I reached the point where I’d stopped, I read more carefully:
After making the scene—and making a scene—Takeda bolted, leaving her guests, creatively dressed as crime stoppers and criminals, to continue their merry-making without her—which they did, with gusto.
Everyone from Inspector Gadget (actor Jack Jason) to Sherlock Holmes (producer Luke “Spaz” Cruz) to Hercule Poirot (Retired Admiral Eugene Stadelhofer) was there, with a surprise appearance by a garish Lizzie Borden-wannabe (uninvited protester Xtreme Siouxie), all drinking festive “cellblock hooch” and dining on “prison mess hall” food—expertly prepared by local celebrity chef Rocco Ghirenghelli of KBAY-TV’s Bay City Café fame.
According to several of the guests—and seconded by this reporter—Rocco’s Ball & Chain-shaped wedding cake was nothing short of edible art worthy of the SF MOMA, and his Chocolate Maltese Falcons were “to die for.”
With or without the guests of honor, the event—planned and presented by Presley Parker from Killer Parties—was a “cellblock riot,” delighting guests while garnering over $100,000 for a good cause: the Alzheimer’s Association.
Parker replaced premiere party queen Andi Sax at the last minute, when Sax bowed out for “personal reasons,” according to Chloe Webster, Mayor Green’s administrative assistant. “We were lucky to get Killer Parties on such short notice!” Webster said.
After the breakout success of this clever caper, it would be criminal not to let Killer Parties host all the mayor’s future events. While the guest of honor could not be reached for comment, the groom-to-be was overheard saying, “I was hoping for twenty-years-to-life with Ikea.”
Now that the runaway bride is on the lam, it looks like our marriage-minded mayor won’t have to do the time—this time.
Whoa! Was I at the same party as the purple-penned reporter? Guess she hadn’t heard about the deaths—murders. At least, not in time for the morning edition of the Chronicle.
And thank God for that.
Now the phone was ringing off the hook and I had more “Please call back!” messages than business cards. I let the next few calls go to my voice mail and listened in while school principals, museum coordinators, and restaurant owners left requests for party info.
I hated to be a party pooper, but I didn’t see how it could be helped. Number 1: How was I going to manage all these potential events? And Number 2: How was I going to manage them from jail?
Still . . . the governor? I thought of the amount of money he could raise for a good cause. And hosting a murder mystery for him would be a piece of cake. I already had a plot in mind:
Detective Luke Melvin lay dead in the foyer of the Governor’s Mansion, impaled by an ornate medieval sword dipped in the rare poisonous oil of the Amazon puffer fish, garroted by a string of Chinese lantern party lights (provided by Killer Parties), and bludgeoned by a priceless Golden Falcon encrusted with rare jewels—
The phone rang, jangling my nerves and bringing me out of my murderous daydream. What was the matter with me? That’s all I needed—one more murder on my hands, even if it was the detective’s.
Letting the call go to voice mail, I glanced at the newspaper article. Jeez, until today I’d have used any excuse to host a party—just to bring in a little money. I’d even taken to reading the want ads for some part-time temp work to keep me going until the party business kicked in. I glanced over at the section where I’d circled half a dozen dead-end jobs: process server, personal shopper, coffee barista, convalescent hospital assistant, meter maid, dog walker. . . .
I wadded up the section and tossed it into my wastebasket. The trash was filling up nicely. If the phone kept ringing like it was, I might even get my own Killer Parties show on HGTV.
After I was paroled, of course. Like Martha.
Before I could start planning my Going Away for Good party, a blast of salt air swept in through the front door and into my open office, whipping my daydreams out to sea.
I looked up to see a gun pointing in my direction.
Chapter 13
PARTY PLANNING TIP #13:
Choose your event caterer carefully. Nothing ruins a party faster than a bunch of toilet-hugging guests who’ve been poisoned by bad sushi.
“Watch out with that thing!” I screamed. “You might put an eye out!”
Raj Reddy, the island’s foremost security guard, looked more dazed and confused than armed and dangerous. Of course, just arming Raj was probably dangerous in itself.
“I got your 911! What is going on?” Raj said, glancing around, his eyes wild with anticipation.
“Nothing—now. You’re a little late. And put that gun away before you shoot someone.”
Raj holstered his gun awkwardly, finally jamming it home. He’d only recently completed the weapons requirement for his security guard job, and it showed.
“Actually, they were shooting over at CeeGee Studio.”
“Shooting?” I raised an eyebrow.
“A live-action scene. Actually, they were needing an extra for playing a police officer and they chose me.” He puffed up visibly.
I glanced at his badge. His TI ID had been replaced by a realistic-looking SFPD logo.
“Well, it’s impressive, but you’d better take that off. You could get arrested for impersonating an officer.” I grinned.
Raj nodded. “Ha. You are pulling my legs again.” He plucked off the badge and replaced it with his real badge, tucking the bogus one into his pocket.
“So why were you calling me? Was there another breakin?” He sniffed the air. “It’s smelling funny in here.”
“False alarm.” I jerked my thumb at Brad Matthews, who had closed his office door while he worked on his box collection. “Delicia thought the new guy was an intruder. Turns out he’s our new renter.”
Raj looked through the door’s window at Brad. “Actually, there was another breakin-in last night. When I was doing my rounds early this morning, the back door to our own barracks was open. I was looking around to see—”
“What?” I bolted up from my chair.
Startled, Raj pulled his head back. “Yes, that is what I am telling you now. Someone was breaking into the kitchen—”
I ran down the hall, where I found Delicia reheating her gourmet tea in the microwave.
“What’s up?” she asked, looking up.
I glanced around the kitchen and shook my head. Not only had we apparently had a break-in, but if there had been any evidence, it was now completely wiped away—by crime scene cleaning products. I ran a finger along a countertop.
“Great. Just great.”
Delicia frowned. “Hey. If you don’t like the way I clean, next time you can do it all yourself!”
“That’s not it.” I turned to Raj, who had come up behind me. “Raj s
aid we had a break-in last night, probably sometime during the wedding. He found the back door open early this morning.”
Raj nodded.
“Oh my God!” Delicia glanced around the kitchen. “Did they take anything?”
I did a spot check for the espresso maker, Cuisinart, and the rest of the appliances that weren’t nailed down. Nothing was missing as far as I could tell.
Not that it mattered to me. I never cooked, aside from brewing lattes when I couldn’t get to Starbucks or microwaving Rocco’s leftovers. The Cuisinart container occasionally came in handy to drink from when there weren’t any clean cups.
“Where do you keep your cleaning products?” came a voice from behind me.
Brad Matthews had silently stepped up behind us. He slid in between us and pulled open two cupboard doors.
“Uh . . .” I shrugged. “No clue.”
“Up there.” Raj pointed to a cupboard over the refrigerator.
Brad found a stool and stood on it to open the cupboard door. Inside was a collection of bottles I’d never seen before. Mainly because I’d had no reason to. We had a janitorial service to clean the building, and aside from some Lysol, we’d used Brad’s cleaning stuff to get rid of Rocco’s stinky leftovers.
“What’s all that?” I said stupidly.
Brad shuffled through the bottles in the cupboard, one by one. “Drain cleaner, glass cleaner, sink cleaner. Bug spray, roach motels, ant traps.” He looked at me. “Essentially a bunch of toxic chemicals.”
“Poisons?”
He nodded, then glanced back at the cupboard. “Where’s the rodenticide?”
“Rodenticide?”
“Rat poison.”
“Rat poison?” I was beginning to develop echolalia. “Why would we have rat poison? We don’t have . . .” Oh God. Of course we did. We had a kitchen. A kitchen meant rats—especially in an old barracks like this.
I looked at Delicia and Raj. Both shrugged.
“Maybe Rocco would know,” Delicia offered.
Rocco. Where the hell was he?
Brad closed the cupboard and stepped down from his perch. “Next time you have a break-in, don’t touch anything.” With that, he left the room, leaving us standing there feeling like naughty children caught with our hands in the poisoned cookie jar.
How had he known about the break-in?
Back at my desk, I quietly steamed. Don’t touch anything? Who did he think he was? Detective Melvin in a white jumpsuit?
“Enough!” I said aloud and stood up. I needed to clear my head. Too many thoughts were rattling around inside my brain—Detective Melvin, the deaths, the phone calls, Rocco, the new guy, the break-in, the questionably missing rat poison.
A skate around the island was the best way to jostle those loose ends into some sort of cohesive order. When I skated, I did my best thinking. I twisted my hair up and clamped it with a giant clip, put on my Rollerblades, knee and elbow pads, and headed for the running path that circumnavigated the island.
Rarely used except on weekends by a handful of locals, the path was originally created by the navy to keep their enlisted men in shape for war. The scenic trail was another of the best-kept secrets in the San Francisco Bay Area. But all the talk of redevelopment—Indian casinos, exclusive high-rises, film studios, military monuments—loomed over the island like an insidious fog bank.
As the October breeze whipped my hair and goose-pimpled my skin, I found myself drawn to the rocky spot where Ikea’s body had been discovered floating. How had she ended up there? The currents? Maybe one of the windsurfers would know.
Or was it something—or someone—else?
More importantly, how had she ended up dead?
Once again I spotted Duncan Grant just outside the crime scene tape. What was he doing here? When he looked up, I waved and headed over to the rocky edge.
“Hey, Dunk. Find any more bodies?”
He glared at me. “Very funny. I’m just checking one of the caches.” He knelt down and withdrew a box hidden between some jagged rocks. Standing again, he opened it and began picking through the whimsical objects left by geocachers—a Mickey Mouse figurine, a dot-com pen, a snow globe, a decoder ring, a magnifying glass, and an earring shaped like a tiny book.
“Wait!” I said as he started to close the cache. I lifted the earring from the box and turned it over in my hand. There was an inscription in miniature print, almost too small to read. “Hand me that,” I said, indicating the Cracker Jack- sized magnifying glass. He picked it up and passed it to me; I held it over the engraving and read the fine print: TO I.T. LOVE D.G.
Oh my God. The earring belonged to Ikea. I remembered she’d been wearing it at the party.
So how did it end up inside this cache box?
Chapter 14
PARTY PLANNING TIP #14:
When arranging your seating chart, be careful not to place a warhawk next to a peacenik, or you may find your party becoming a combat zone.
I pocketed the earring.
“What are you doing?” Duncan asked. He looked at me as if I’d just robbed a grave.
Perhaps I had.
I didn’t want him to think I was stealing evidence from a crime scene, but before I could come up with a good lie, he added, “TSLS.”
“What?”
He pointed to the cache. “ ‘Take something, leave something. ’ It’s the rule. If you take something from a cache, you have to leave something in its place.”
“Oh . . . uh . . . sure.” Whew. I searched my pockets for something I could leave in exchange for the earring and pulled out a Killer Parties business card. Talk about an advertising opportunity. You never knew who might find it and suddenly want a party. I set the card in the box.
“That’s pretty lame,” Duncan said, closing the cache box. He set it back in its hiding place between a couple of large jagged rocks.
“Not any lamer than half the things in there,” I said.
But Duncan was no longer paying attention to me. Something in the distance held his gaze. I turned to see a familiar man in a white jumpsuit. He was taking down the crime scene tape left behind by the police techs.
Brad Matthews again.
“Hey, what are you doing?” I called to him, then headed over.
“Doing my job,” he said, rolling up the tape. “I’m a crime scene cleaner, remember? Question is, what are you doing here?”
None of your business, I thought. “Just getting some exercise.” I pointed to my skates. “And talking with Duncan.”
Brad raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Find anything?”
My hand went to the pocket that held the earring. “Nope. Uh-uh. Nothing. You?”
He eyed me. “Like I said, I’m just here to clean up. SFPD sent me.” He nodded toward Duncan. “Who’s that?”
“He’s the guy who found the body. Duncan Grant. He organizes GPS games.”
“Geocaching, huh?” Brad watched Duncan for a few seconds, then returned to whatever it was he was doing. Looked like he was just puttering around. He got paid for that?
“Not much to clean up, is there?” I asked.
“Nah. A few loose ends.”
Curious, I asked, “Do you ever find anything the cops missed when you’re cleaning up a crime scene?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes, but usually the scene is pretty well picked clean. Cops aren’t as stupid in real life as they are on TV.”
I thought of the earring in my pocket. The sound of a car engine pulled my attention away. I turned to check out the rubbernecker.
Uh-oh.
Detective Melvin. He had just arrived in a white, unmarked, but obviously police-issue car.
“I gotta go,” I said abruptly, and skated down the path before the detective could slap the cuffs on me. When I was just about out of sight, I glanced back to see him engaged in a serious-looking conversation with Brad Matthews.
They were both staring at me.
What was the detective saying to Brad?
And what was Brad telling the detective?
By the time I reached the office, I had a plan. Since it was business hours, the office door was unlocked, but at least it wasn’t standing open. I let myself in and skated down the hall, looking through the glass partitions of the other offices for signs of life. I spotted Delicia talking on the phone, Raj hunched over his desk, and Berk staring at his monitor, probably editing the party video.
The only ones missing were Brad Matthews and Rocco.
While the others were occupied, I tried the doorknob to the newly rented office across the hall from mine. Locked. Shit.
Raj. He had a master key.
How unprofessional, even illegal, would it be if I got him to open Brad’s door?
How badly did I want to know more about the crime scene cleaner and his sudden appearance on the island?
If Brad caught me, I could always claim he must have left the door unlocked. People forget to lock their doors all the time. But what would I tell Raj to get him to open it?
My office phone rang, giving me an idea. Letting the call go to the answering machine, I skated down to Raj’s office, the last one before the kitchen. To my surprise, he wasn’t reading a weapons catalog or studying for a cop exam or doing anything that might keep us safe on the island.
He was eating a bagel and reading what looked like a movie script.
“Raj! Hi. Hey, I wondered if you could do me a favor and open the door to the new guy’s office? I think I left my cell phone in there.”
He looked at me as if I’d just said, “Stick ’em up!”
“Oh no, Ms. Presley. Actually, I cannot.”
“But my cell phone—I need it, Raj. I’ve got some business calls to make and my office phone is . . . broken.” Not only was I lying, now I was whining.