The Minstrel and the Masquerade

by Lila K Bell

  I tore across the empty space at the front of the room and leaped into the air before I had a chance to think better of it. A moment later, I’d landed on the floor on top of Joseph Marley to the soundtrack of hundreds of people sucking in air in one unified breath.

  “Wha—” Kelly sputtered. She hadn’t even finished the word by the time Sybil reached my side. She knelt down and picked up the glass Marley had dropped. There was still some champagne in the bottom of the glass, and I silently praised her quick thinking.

  With a groan, I rolled onto my back and found myself staring at a red-faced Detective Curtis.

  “What are you doing, Ms. Gates?” she demanded.

  I hugged my arm around my ribs, which I’d smacked against an upright flower arrangement during my flight. “Ask her what’s in the glass,” I wheezed.

  “That is neither here nor there,” said the detective. “Fiona Gates, I’m arresting you on—”

  “Ask her what’s in the glass,” I repeated, cutting her off in what I hoped was a timely fashion. It didn’t count if she didn’t finish, right?

  With a grunt, I eased myself to my feet and stared at Kelly, who had gone as white as paste. “Tell them, Kelly.”

  “I — I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  I raised an eyebrow, though was certain the effect was muted somewhat by the way I still couldn’t stand up straight. “Are you telling me that if I paid to have that champagne tested, I wouldn’t find aconite? A tasty treat harvested from your husband’s own garden?”

  Kelly’s lip wobbled, and her gaze darted toward the exit. I shifted my step to block her way, hoping her other options were obstructed by the sheer number of people standing around her.

  “I know what you did, Kelly,” I said. “I know you slipped into the Empire on the night of the party and convinced the servers to lend you a uniform and a mask. I know you poisoned the champagne that killed your sister.”

  She didn’t need to know I’d only confirmed the second part less than a minute ago.

  “No!” It came out as a wail, but it didn’t sound like denial. “No, you don’t understand. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. It wasn’t meant for her.” She turned on her heel to glare at her husband. “It was you, you ass. You were the one who was supposed to die that night.”

  Joseph, still lying on his back and propped up on his elbows, looked as though he was about to be sick. His skin had taken on a sweaty green sheen, and I stepped away from him to save my shoes.

  Kelly turned back to me. “There were only two glasses on the tray. I was sure I knew which one was which, but maybe the tray moved, or she grabbed one at random, but before I knew it both were gone, and I thought it was fine. I went back home and it wasn’t — it wasn’t until later that night that I — that I —” she choked on a sob and buried her face in her hands. When she tore them away, her eyes were bright with fury. “It wasn’t supposed to be her.”

  Curtis stepped toward her, but Kelly darted away, throwing herself onto her sister’s corpse. “I’m so sorry, Margie. I could have forgiven you. I didn’t mean for it to be you. It was supposed to be him. That worthless, useless, philandering—”

  Curtis nodded to Sam and another plainclothes officer, who stepped in and gently grasped Kelly by the shoulders.

  “It’s all right,” Sam murmured. “You just come along with us and tell us what happened.”

  “I hope you rot in hell!” Kelly screamed over her shoulder as the police carried her away. I was pretty sure she was talking to her husband, but as I was standing right beside him, I guess I’ll never be sure. She was still sobbing as the crowd parted for them and she was taken out of the room.

  I released a breath and turned my attention to Joseph, who struggled to get to his feet. One of the officers arrived to help him up, but he moved numbly, as though the world had been taken out from under him. Which, I suppose, it had, though maybe it shouldn’t have come as that much of a surprise.

  The door behind the crowd clicked shut, and a wave of silence settled over the room.

  Then all eyes turned toward me.

  17

  It took over an hour for the shock to wear off and the mourners to leave the funeral home. That hour was not the respectful silence you’d expect to find while friends and family said goodbye to their loved one. Most of the funerals I’ve attended — though I’ll admit, there haven’t been many — usually had a good crowd staking out the tissue boxes or taking advantage of the coffee and cookies offered on the refreshment table outside the viewing room. They were full of people hugging each other and sobbing, trying to find strength in each other’s company.

  They were not typically loud and full of “Did you see”s and astonished looks as people navigated a wide berth around the husband of the diseased, who had dropped into a chair in the corner and appeared to have mentally vacated the premises.

  During that hour, I was stuck in one of the overstuffed chairs in the viewing room, waiting for Curtis to come chat with me. The plainclothes officer who was not Sam — I hadn’t had a chance to catch his name — stood nearby to ensure no one else spoke with me. I think it was supposed to be a punishment, or at least to guarantee my statement didn’t change based on something someone said, but I made a note to myself to bring him one of Bea’s pies later as a thank you. From the way everyone gawked at me, I didn’t want to guess what might have passed through their lips.

  Fortunately, I had Sybil on the couch beside me to keep me company. She didn’t say much. Her attention was too focused on Sam, who kept shooting her the stink eye between witness statements.

  “I’m sorry you got dragged into this after all,” I said, when my boredom finally outweighed my discomfort in speaking aloud.

  Sybil shrugged and sagged back against the cushions. Apparently it took solving a murder for her to regress into the slouching, indifferent version of herself I’d spent so many weeks with. “I knew what I was getting into. Besides, I’ve been in way worse trouble with my brother before. And hey, we might have saved a man’s life, right?”

  “I hope so,” I said. “Otherwise, we’ve just created a story for the city to share for the rest of our lives for nothing.”

  Sybil pressed her lips together, her eyes sparkling with restrained laughter. Maybe she hadn’t fully regressed, then. I closed my eyes and bowed my head, focused only on drawing in a slow breath to contain my own mirth.

  Despite everything, how could I not laugh? I imagined how the scene must have looked. Everyone standing around either grieving or curious, and suddenly these two women charge out of nowhere and attack the family. There was no way I would live this down any time soon.

  In fact, I would probably be lucky to have somewhere to sleep tonight. Mother had probably seen to it that all my possessions were packed up and left on the side of the road.

  Fifi, how could you? I heard her say. Tackling a man at his own wife’s funeral!

  Would she care that I might have prevented him from being poisoned in front of half the town, the same fate as Margery?

  Unlikely. In fact, she might resent that I had stepped in. Husband of Murdered Wife Murdered at Wife’s Funeral was a much better headline than Woman Poisoned at Party. The stain on her own reputation might have been forgotten under Kelly’s second attempt.

  Now, thanks to me, negative attention had come to the Gates’s doorstep twice this week.

  Yeah, I didn’t think she would be in too much of a rush to forgive me.

  And that, if anything, only made me want to laugh harder.

  Once I controlled myself, I said, “Still, I would hate for this to wind up on your permanent record or anything.”

  “Oh, you two might be in much more trouble than that,” Detective Curtis said, approaching us at last.

  I sat straight in my chair and stared up at her. Despite the hours she’d already put into this case, she was incredibly put-together. Her pantsuit was uncreased, her hair as smooth as if she’d brushed it before coming
to speak with me. Her eyes were sharp, lined with frustration and irritation, and if I didn’t feel somewhat bad for going against her orders and getting in her way, I would have found her expression more than a little amusing.

  “Might be?” I asked, keeping my tone as polite as possible. I really didn’t want to push it.

  “I haven’t made up my mind yet,” she said, the corners of her mouth curled downward. “What brought you here tonight? Lucky guess?”

  I cleared my throat. “Something like that.”

  Curtis raised an eyebrow, and I shot Sybil a look. We’d come here to pass along information. It was coming a little late, but there was nothing to say we still couldn’t do our civic duty. So together we filled her in on what we’d learned from Emily.

  “I figured Kelly had to be involved in some way, whether she’d poisoned Margery or not, but when you put her being at the party together with the fact that the Marleys grow wolf’s bane in their garden, it wasn’t a huge stretch. So I rushed over here,” I said. “I planned to tell you everything when I got here, but it took sixteen million hours to get into the room, and when I saw her handing Joseph the champagne…”

  “Was it poisoned?” Sybil asked.

  Curtis cast her sidelong glance. “We won’t know until the tests come back, but based on what Mrs. Marley is saying, it’s likely.”

  Sybil slumped into her seat, and I caught her smug smile before she wiped it off her face.

  “Seeing as how you averted a second tragedy,” the detective said, “I’ll let you go this time with a warning. But next time, Ms. Gates, take your lucky guesses straight to us, okay? Unless your goal is to get into the society pages.”

  One of her officers called her over, and she left with no further comment. I heaved a sigh and watched her go, wondering if my luck would continue to hold where that woman was concerned.

  “I can’t believe we did it,” Sybil said, her smile returning now that she wasn’t under the eye of authority. “You set out to solve a murder and actually managed to do it.”

  “You doubted me?” I asked.

  “I just didn’t think it was a thing people actually did. Or could do without, like, a badge or something. You’re basically an official PI.”

  “No,” Sam said, approaching. “She’s not. Private investigators are licensed. They need to be approved to go out asking questions and digging through people’s things. Fiona is a vigilante investigator, and one who’s going to get thrown in jail one of these days. If she doesn’t get me fired first.”

  The anger in his voice did more to quell my sense of victory than anything else could have. His blue eyes burned, and they left me feeling small.

  Which I supposed I deserved. This was twice now I’d broken his trust when it came to his job, and if I wasn’t careful, I was soon going to be out of a friendship.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, offering the apology I’d withheld when I left his house the other day. “I know I said I wouldn’t get involved, and I’m sorry I’ve done anything that made you look bad.”

  “You I don’t care about,” he said, his words as sharp as a slap to the face. “The fact that you got my sister involved, that really drives me crazy. She’s sixteen years old. What are you doing dragging her into things that could ruin her future? What if she gets arrested, Fi? What if she gets hurt? She’s not like you. She can’t just buy her way out of things.”

  Anger swelled within me, and I rose to my feet so we stood almost eye-to-eye. You could say a lot of things about my selfishness and short-sightedness, my rashness and thoughtlessness, but I drew a line at the suggestion that I hid behind my parents’ money. Or that I would ever have let anything happen to Sybil.

  “You should give your sister a lot more credit, Sam. She’s old enough to make her own decisions, and smart enough not to go past the point she knows she should. Have a little more faith.”

  He shoved his hand through his hair. “I should have known you’d be nothing but a bad influence on her. I hoped that putting you together would make both of you grow up. Make you see there’s more to the world than what’s going on in front of your eyes. Instead, you’re both putting my future at risk.”

  I squared my shoulders and met his gaze solidly. “That was never my intention,” I said. “My decisions had nothing to do with you. I saw a way to help, and I went for it. Maybe it wasn’t what I should have done. Maybe I should have left it alone. But I didn’t, and in the end we came out on top. So how about, instead of blowing up at us, you accept what we were able to offer, accept that it’s over and there’s nothing you can do about it, and come out with us for some ice cream.”

  I threw in the last in an effort to diffuse the tension rising between us. Sam was one of my oldest and, often, one of my best friends. I didn’t want to lose him over something as silly as a few moments of bad judgement. Especially when they hadn’t been planned and, in the end, no one had gotten hurt.

  Although his anger lingered, my strategy seemed to work. His frown remained, but lines around his eyes eased, and I thought I caught a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

  “Maybe I should backtrack my decision,” he said. “Make an effort to keep you two apart. I know I would sleep a lot better if that were the case.”

  “What?” Sybil asked, and the panic in her voice warmed me considering a few days ago she’d acted like she wanted nothing to do with me.

  Before she could say anything else, I threw my arm around her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Sam, but at this point it’s out of your hands. Sybil’s too cool a friend to give up.”

  I glanced at her to find a bright smile widening on her face, bringing out the sparkle in her eyes and the natural flush of her cheeks. For the first time since I’d met her, she looked more like a sixteen-year-old girl and less like a corpse.

  Sam groaned, but the fight had gone out of him. It wasn’t to say he’d forgive and forget, but at least I could go home without worrying I’d ruined things between us. “Fine,” he said, “but I don’t have time for ice cream, and you need to get to home. Got it?”

  Sybil nodded. “Got it.”

  He shook his head and walked away, mumbling. Sybil pulled out of my arm, and I gave her a discreet high five.

  “So now what are we going to do?” she asked.

  I chuckled. “I think we’ve broken enough rules for one night. I’m going to do what your brother says and drive you home. Raincheque on that ice cream, though. You went for a classic flavour the last time we went to Nathan’s. Next time I expect you to be a little more adventurous.”

  I cast a look around the room at the few remaining mourners passing by the open casket to pay their respects, though I guessed more than one of them had stuck around out of curiosity to see where all the fuss would lead. So far, thank goodness, I hadn’t seen my parents anywhere. With any luck, I’d be out of here long before they arrived and heard what happened. Tomorrow morning was early enough to deal with my mother.

  “Come on,” I said, jerking my head toward the door. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Sybil grabbed her bag and walked like someone who had just won a prize fight. Which, I supposed, she had.

  I led the way out of the room, leaving the dead and the curious behind us.

  18

  I dropped Sybil off at home and drove around town a few times while I decided what to do with the rest of my night.

  Going home was out of the question. Unless my parents had been abducted by aliens or had accidentally locked themselves in a bunker with no radio reception — and even then I didn’t doubt that some of the determined local gossips would find a way to them — there was no way they wouldn’t have heard all the latest news by now. While it was inevitable that I would have to face their particular music at some point, I really wasn’t in the mood for it tonight. Considering how Mother had come down on me yesterday just for talking with Marley, I doubted she’d be all roses and kittens about the fact that I’d tackled him in front of a crowd next to his sis
ter-in-law’s casket.

  Even I had to admit, it hadn’t been the smoothest move.

  It had worked, but maybe — just maybe — I should have tackled the actual murderer instead.

  Still, there was nothing to be done about it. As I’d told Sam, it was over and done with. The only thing for it now was to accept it and wait for the next big scandal to break the airwaves. Best to move on and focus on whatever came next.

  Though I had no idea what it might be.

  Troy’s advice lingered in the back of my mind, but after the excitement of the day, I hadn’t had time to give it much thought. Now that Margery Brooks’s murder had been caught, I guessed I was left with very little choice.

  How long would it be before the next itch nagged at me, pushing me to do something to satisfy it? If it couldn’t be solving crimes, did I really want to go back to my books? Pickings had begun to slim over the past year, all the best options already tucked away behind my bookcase and people less inclined to purchase for the fear that it would be stolen before they’d had a chance to take out their insurance policy.

  Was the infamous Midnight Minstrel really me anymore?

  I couldn’t lie that I missed the rush, but I’d found all of that — plus the satisfaction of bringing two murderers to justice — in this whole… as Sam had called it, vigilante investigator thing.

  I wasn’t ready to give it up, but for the sake of my standing in the eyes of the Brookside Police Department, I supposed it would be in my best interest. Better that than have them start poking around in my life. I’d hate for them to stumble on the copy of Lady Susan that opened the door to my private literary universe.

  Really, right now, what I needed more than anything was a place to hide my face. And maybe rehash the story to receive an accolade or two.

  I found myself pulling up in front of the Trove, parking Mercy next to Bessie. A twinge of guilt ran through me at the sight of my old beater. With my change in hobbies, I hadn’t had a chance to give her much of an airing lately.