“I saw Libba parking her car on my way in.”
“Good. We can start on time for once.” Every minute she’d spent waiting on Daisy (and there had been lots of them) had been wasted. That’s what Jinx’s tone conveyed.
Daisy’s eyes filled with tears. Was she wounded by the unkindness of Jinx’s words or their tone?
“We’ll get to spend more time together.” The brightness I forced into my voice sounded brittle. “Daisy, come sit down. Today is the day you can tease Libba about being the last one here.”
Daisy sat and directed her doe-eyed gaze at Jinx. “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.” Daisy had young children and was given to mothering inanities. Don’t cry over spilled milk. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. You can’t judge a book by its cover. All of them completely foolish, unless it was actual milk that was spilled and not something bigger. Like blood.
Libba breezed in, took the temperature of the room, and stuck her head back into the hallway. “Carlos, when you have a moment, we’re going to need a bottle of wine. Put it on my account.”
We played a rubber in near silence.
Libba ordered a second bottle of wine. It was the second bottle that loosened our tongues.
“How’s Grace?” Daisy asked. “Finding another body at your house must be terribly upsetting for her.”
“She seems to be handling it well.”
“Still…” Daisy sounded doubtful.
“She said Grace was fine.” Jinx’s voice was a bit slurry. Apparently she’d had more than her fair share of the first bottle of wine.
Libba glanced at me and raised a single brow. Did I know what was going on?
I did. I shrugged as if I didn’t.
“So tell us about this party tomorrow night, Ellison.” At least Libba was trying to be pleasant.
“It’s the benefactors’ party for a luncheon my cousin Cora is chairing.”
“Cora?” Daisy cocked her head to the side.
“She’s married to Mother’s first cousin Thornton.”
Daisy shook her head. “I can’t picture her.”
“She’s mousy.” The left corner of Jinx’s upper lip curled into a sneer. “She lets that husband of hers walk all over her.”
I would have liked to argue (maybe not, given Jinx’s mood), but I’d have lost the argument because Jinx was right.
“Now, Jinx,” said Daisy. “We never really know what goes on in another woman’s marriage.”
My jaw dropped. Daisy shared mommy inanities, not pearls of wisdom.
Then she added, “Ellison’s cousin could be perfectly happy.”
The hinge on my jaw resumed normal function. There was the Pollyanna Daisy with whom I played bridge every week, her rose-colored glasses firmly positioned on the bridge of her nose. One need only glance at Cora to know she and Thornton did not enjoy a happy marriage.
We let Daisy’s comment sit on the table. No one was willing to respond.
Daisy shifted in her chair and smiled brightly. “Who do you think killed Khaki?”
All things being equal, I’d rather talk about Cora. “No idea.”
“I’ve been thinking.” Daisy’s mouth thinned and she rubbed her right hand across her eyes. See no evil.
“And?” asked Libba.
“Well—” Daisy caught her upper lip in her teeth and glanced around the card room, empty except for us. “Do you think your last decorator would…I mean…I heard she was furious.”
“At me. Not Khaki.” Even though I’d had just cause to let her go, Olivia Forde’s cheeks paled and her mouth drew into a snarl when I told her someone else would be redecorating the study.
“I don’t know, Ellison.” Libba took a contemplative sip of wine. “Khaki had been getting jobs with lots of people that Olivia expected to get.”
“Olivia?” I shook my head. Of all the possible motives, murder over clients seemed the most far-fetched.
“Then who?” insisted Daisy. “Who do you think killed her?”
I forced my gaze to Daisy. No sneaking a peek at Jinx…nope. Nope. Not doing it. Daisy wore her twin set and her pearls with aplomb. She actually looked pulled together and not like something the cat dragged in. She was who I needed to look at not…My head turned. Dammit. I dropped my gaze to my lap.
Some awful, disloyal, horrible part of me insisted on knowing how Jinx was reacting to this conversation.
I examined my cuticles instead. “I have no idea.” If only I felt as sure as I sounded.
I drove home with rain spattering the windshield. The wipers’ swish sounded more like Was it Jinx? than a swish. I ignored them.
Not.
“She didn’t do it.” Mine was the only voice in the car except for Harry Chapin’s, and he was too busy singing about a man who neglected his family to listen to me.
I pulled into the drive (blessedly free of cars that weren’t supposed to be there) and hurried inside. “I’m home,” I called.
“We’re in the kitchen.” Grace sounded as if she might be getting a cold.
The kitchen was warm and welcoming and smelled like hot chocolate. Aggie and Grace, their hands wrapped around mugs, were perched on stools at the island, and Max lay near a vent soaking up heat.
I dropped a kiss on the top of Grace’s head. “How was school?”
“Fine.”
“How was your math test?”
“Fine.”
“Anything interesting happen today?” There was a question she couldn’t answer with fine.
“Not really.” She sounded nonchalant. Suspiciously nonchalant.
I poured myself a cup of hot chocolate and joined them at the island. “Nothing?”
“Dawn and Trip broke up.”
Trip I knew. His grandmother played bridge with Mother. He’d beaten a piñata to smithereens at one of Grace’s early birthday parties.
He preferred Batman to Superman.
“Do I know Dawn?”
“I doubt it.” Three words. Three words that sounded so much like Mother they stole my breath. Three words. They conveyed all I ever needed to know. Dawn was not our kind. I never would know her. And Trip Michaels was better off without her. Grace had no business sounding like that.
I crossed my arms.
“There’s no reason to look like that,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Like you just sucked a lemon.” Grace swung her ponytail. “All I meant was that she didn’t grow up here.”
“Mhmm.” I had my doubts.
“Seriously, Mom, lighten up.”
Just what every parent wanted to hear.
“Aunt Sis called. She wants you to phone her.”
“Is everything all right?” My aunt was in Ohio with her son so that my sister could donate a kidney to him.
“She sounded fine. Call her. By five.” Grace stood. “I have homework.”
Aggie watched her go. “Teenagers should come with an instruction manual.”
“That would take all the fun out of raising them.”
“She’s a good kid.”
I didn’t argue. Instead I nodded and sipped my cocoa.
“I cleaned the foyer after your mother left.” Aggie’s voice tiptoed through a mine field.
“What did she do?” Mother was fully capable of returning and critiquing Aggie’s cleaning techniques.
“Nothing.” The but in Aggies voice was wider than the fairway on the twelfth hole.
“What’s wrong?”
She stood, opened a drawer, and withdrew a plastic sandwich bag.
Nestled inside was a matchbook. I’d seen a matchbook like that once before.
“Where did
you find that?”
“With the umbrellas in the stand in the foyer.”
The brass umbrella stand gleamed from regular polishing. There was no way the matchbook in Aggie’s plastic bag could have been there long.
“I polish on Thursdays.” Meaning the matchbook had appeared in the stand in the past week.
The seemingly innocent matchbook was anything but. At some point between Thursday and now, the matches had migrated from Lord-knew-where to my foyer. And it wasn’t just any matchbook. It was black. The darkness lightened only by a name in silver metallic, Club K. It was only on closer inspection that one noticed the tiny pair of handcuffs. I didn’t need to inspect more closely. My late husband had been a habitué of Club K. I was all too familiar with the matchbook and what happened at the club it advertised.
I closed my eyes, gripped the edge of the counter, and waited for the room to stop spinning. “I don’t suppose…”
“It wasn’t there last week.”
Damn. How twisted was it that I’d hoped a matchbook from a sex club belonged to my husband?
“Someone came into the house, reached into their pocket, pulled something out, and this—” Aggie poked at the bag with the tip of her nail “—fell out.”
Most likely the something was a gun. Most likely that gun was used to shoot Khaki. “We have to tell Anarchy.”
“I know.” She didn’t sound remotely happy.
Condemned men on their way to the chair walked with more enthusiasm than I. Sure, the phone looked harmless enough, but the call I had to make would bring the police back to the house. What if they closed my foyer as a crime scene? What if they dusted for fingerprints in the rest of the house? What if they told us to leave entirely? Mother’s party was a day away. She’d have apoplexy. And when she was done, there would be another murder. Mine.
I picked up the receiver. Slowly.
“You’re certain you want to do that?” asked Aggie.
Not remotely.
I inserted my finger in the dial. “Murder is more important than a cocktail party.”
“You’re sure?”
Nope.
I dialed.
The call that brought Anarchy back to the house took three minutes.
Ten minutes elapsed before he arrived at my door.
Unfortunately, he did not come alone.
Detective Peters scowled at the umbrella stand as if it had conspired with a hat tree to hide evidence.
Anarchy scowled at Aggie and her sandwich baggie of evidence.
“I can’t believe our people missed evidence,” growled the rumpled detective.
Did Peters think we’d planted the matchbook?
He held out his hand for the baggie and Aggie gave it to him.
He lifted the matchbook to eye level and squinted. “Club K. You know this place, Jones?”
“Yeah.”
I leaned against the wall. Almost wished I could slide down it.
“What’s with the handcuffs?”
My lips remained firmly sealed. Anarchy could explain to his partner that the matches came from a sex club.
“Later.” Anarchy returned his attention to Aggie. “Where exactly did you find the matches?”
“With the umbrellas.”
“When was the last time the umbrellas were removed from the stand?” he asked.
“Last Thursday,” said Aggie.
“You’re sure these aren’t yours?” Detective Peters shook the bag. His beady eyes narrowed and the corner of his mouth curled into a sneer.
“Positive. I don’t smoke.” And if I did, I wouldn’t carry matches from Club K.
“Yours?” Peters directed his question to Aggie.
“No.”
“Could they belong to your daughter?”
An appalled squeak escaped my lungs. “No!”
“Who has been here since Monday?” asked Peters.
“My mother and her staff. The matches do not belong to them.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Mother didn’t need whips or cuffs or nightmare-inducing apparatuses to bend people to her will. “They don’t go to sex clubs.”
If I hadn’t been looking right at Detective Peters, I would have missed the lift of his eyebrows and the drop of his jaw. The expression lasted less than a second. He replaced shock with his customary you’d-better-respect-me-or-else scowl. “And you do?”
“Enough, Peters. I’ll explain later.” Anarchy looked intimidating without a scowl.
Peters looked from me to his partner then shrugged. “We need to get these dusted.” He frowned at Aggie. “I suppose your prints are all over them?”
“Probably.”
The unpleasant expression on Peters’ face deepened and his fingers closed together as if he was imagining them closing on real handcuffs.
“The matches don’t belong to anyone in this house,” Aggie added.
“So your theory is that they belong to the killer?” Peters sounded snide.
“Who else?” I asked.
Anarchy directed his coffee-colored gaze at Aggie. “Did you find anything else?”
“No.” She shook her head and her giant hoop earrings glinted in the late afternoon light.
Detective Peters grunted. “This is all too convenient.” Did he think I’d planted evidence? Did he still consider me a suspect? “Don’t either of you leave town.”
He did.
eleven
Thursday passed in a whirl—the caterer, the liquor store, the florist, and the company that rented glasses all delivered their wares. The caterer claimed Aggie’s kitchen. The bartender, Chester, arrived late in the afternoon and set up a full bar in the living room. The florist set a huge arrangement on my dining room table and smaller vases on every other surface.
By five o’clock, the house was perfect. Even the harpist was in place. Tucked into the farthest corner of the living room.
Good thing, too. At two minutes after five, Mother and Daddy arrived.
My father disappeared into the family room with a murmur about the evening news.
Mother was there to inspect. She moved through the public rooms of my home with an economy of effort that boggled the mind. Lord only knew the length of her internal checklist.
“Good evening, Chester.” She could find no fault with the living room, the sunroom, or the smiling bartender. “Do you have plenty of limes and olives?”
“Yes, Mrs. Walford. I believe I do.”
“May I have a martini please?”
“Dry?” he asked.
“Arid.”
“Mother, what’s wrong?” Daddy was the martini drinker, not Mother.
“The plane was delayed. The speaker can’t join us this evening. This party has been a disaster from the word go.” That might be true, but Mother’s level of anxiety seemed higher than planes flew. And that was exceedingly unusual. Mother ate stress for breakfast. She didn’t wear it in the corners of her mouth.
“I’m sure everyone will understand.”
“They won’t. But this is Cora’s fault. She should have booked a flight for much earlier in the day.” Mother accepted a drink from Chester and drank deeply. “I need to check the dining room.”
I trailed after her.
Snowy white damask covered the length of the table and the floral arrangement—spider mums and bittersweet—was flanked by my great-grandmother’s candlesticks. Tapers that mirrored the color of the bittersweet waited for a flame while sterling serving dishes waited for food.
“This looks lovely.”
Praise? “Mother are you feeling all right?”
“Fine.” She patted the perfect helmet of her hair. “Is Hunter coming tonight?”
There was a question I didn’t care to answer. “Um…”
Ding dong
Saved by the bell.
Mother glanced at her watch. “That will be Thornton and Cora. I told her to arrive early to check on things.” The unsaid I shouldn’t have to tell her that hung in the air like a soap bubble.
“I’ll get the door.”
“Where’s Aggie?” Mother’s tone made it clear she thought my housekeeper should be answering the door, not helping me dodge questions.
“Supervising in the kitchen. I’m on door duty until the buffet goes out.”
“You didn’t change the menu, did you?”
“The caterer will pass rumaki.”
She sniffed.
“I’d better get that door.” I hurried into the front hall.
Cora stood on my front stoop. “Thornton will be a few minutes late.” As greetings went it was weak.
“How lovely to see you.” I beckoned her inside. “Please, come in.”
A chill wind—one that smelled of impending snow—followed Cora into the foyer and snaked around my legs. I shivered. “It’s cold out there.”
She nodded. Barely. As if she hadn’t noticed the biting cold.
One of the caterer’s extra staff materialized. “May I take your coat, ma’am?”
Cora shrugged out of a grey cashmere coat, took off her gloves, jammed them in a pocket (they’d be wrinkled later), and handed over the coat.
“We’re putting the coats in the blue room upstairs, ma’am.” The young man turned and climbed the stairs.
Cora watched him go. She wore a pale beige sack. Well, maybe not a sack. Cora’s dress wasn’t that flattering. She pressed her palms against her hips, smoothed the fabric, and took another step into the foyer. “Thank you for doing this, Ellison. I know it’s an imposition.”
“Not at all.” I scratched the end of my nose.
“It is. I know it is. Especially now that the speaker can’t be here. And I’m grateful. Thornton so wants this luncheon to be a success.”
“What do you want?” The question popped out, unexpected and fully formed like Athena springing from Zeus’ head.
Watching the Detectives Page 10