Party Crashers

by Stephanie Bond

Jolie frowned. “The one on LeMon’s wrist? I noticed it, but I couldn’t make out what it was.”

  “Kyle had one in the same place, but I could see his because the slob had lost a cuff link. It was some kind of crest…Maybe a college fraternity thing?”

  Jolie splayed her hand. “It could mean nothing.”

  “Did your boyfriend have one?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm. Well, you’re right—it could be nothing. I gathered that you knew Realtor Barbie from somewhere?”

  Jolie rolled her eyes. “Sammy is my ex-boss.”

  Carlotta made a face. “Did she fire you?”

  “No. I quit.”

  Carlotta raised her eyebrows, then grinned, revealing her retouched smile. “I like you, Jolie Goodman. You’ve got chutzpah.”

  Warm surprise suffused Jolie’s chest, and she conceded a little thrill to be accepted by someone like Carlotta, who was such an interesting character herself.

  They climbed a short set of carpeted stairs to another bar area where they swapped two more tickets for fresh drinks. “This is my limit,” Jolie murmured, already feeling a little light-headed. On the other hand, the guilt of consuming free drinks seemed to dissipate with each one, Jolie noted, sipping the crisp chardonnay.

  Carlotta stopped a waiter and whipped out her British accent. “Pardon me, could you direct me to the smoking area?”

  “There’s smoking outside only,” he said apologetically, and pointed. “Down this hall and to the right, out the doors onto a covered patio.”

  She thanked the man, then pulled out her neon-yellow cell phone. “I’ll tell Hannah where to meet us.”

  While Carlotta talked on the tiny phone, Jolie realized the raised floor gave her a good vantage for spying. She slid a glance in the direction where they’d been standing earlier. Only Kyle Coffee remained, talking to a new group of people, none of whom she recognized. She picked out Beck and Della Underwood a few yards away, shaking hands with more nominees. Beck was hard to miss because he was at least a half head taller than most of the men in the room. His hand hovered at his sister’s waist protectively and Jolie experienced a stab of envy over their closeness. If she ever became a mother, she would want more than one child to make sure they had siblings to grow up with and comfort and companionship after she and their father had passed on.

  Why those domestic thoughts were whirling through her head now, she couldn’t fathom. She had to get through this chaos surrounding Gary before she could move on with her life. But as she watched Beck move, undeniable attraction curled in her stomach. She liked the way he carried his body—with the grace of a natural athlete. It was, she realized, easier to observe him from a distance. When the man was in her proximity, in her personal space, his presence played havoc with her senses.

  She wondered if he’d stepped in tonight for his powerful father, and if he’d minded. Was he the prodigal son returning home to pull his weight in the family conglomerate after whiling away a few years in paradise? Had he been summoned home?

  His noise about finding a house notwithstanding, would he stay in Atlanta, or be off on another adventure when things became too staid? That kind of freedom frightened Jolie, it was too…uncertain. She needed boundaries to be able to organize and guide her life, a measuring stick against which to gauge her progress—a by-product of her blue-collar parents, she was sure. She supposed it would be different if one were raised without financial limitations, which probably explained why money married money…being rich was as much a state of mind as it was a state of bank account.

  As she watched, a beautiful redhead engaged Beck in conversation. The woman was perfect in every way: perfect hair, perfect smile, perfect figure, perfect clothes, perfect carriage. She angled her body toward Beck in an unmistakable invitation, and he didn’t turn away. He was, after all, a man. A rich man who was accustomed to having beautiful women throw themselves at him. Jolie’s cheeks flamed that she had even briefly entertained the idea that he might be interested in her.

  He laughed at something the woman said, revealing even white teeth, then he glanced around the room and before she could look away, looked up and caught her staring at him. Great. He lifted his chin slightly and a smile played on his mouth before he turned his head to respond to something else the redhead said.

  Jolie looked away before she could make an even bigger fool out of herself. Undoubtedly, the man already thought she was certifiable—why not behave like a stalker too?

  Keeping an eye peeled for Roger LeMon, she scanned the crowd methodically, thinking she should have watched where he’d gone. A few seconds later, she chastised herself. Just because LeMon gave her the creeps and lied—possibly—about knowing Gary didn’t mean he was a criminal monster. He simply could be a run-of-the-mill chauvinistic jerk.

  The wisecrack that Kyle Coffee had made about a divorce attorney—had he been hinting that he himself could use one, or Roger? Neither man, in her opinion, presented himself as being prime husband material. Is that what Della Underwood had decided, or had Roger LeMon ended their relationship?

  Carlotta snapped her phone closed and stashed it in her bag. “Hannah will meet us outside in a few minutes. Want to come?”

  “Sure. Carlotta…what do you know about Della Underwood?”

  Carlotta pursed her mouth. “Actually, Della and I went to the same private high school for a while.”

  “Were you friends?”

  “No. She was a year ahead of me, and she hung with a very exclusive crowd. Her mother has always been sickly, so she began making appearances with her old man when she was still in high school.” Carlotta laughed. “I was wildly jealous of her, we all were.”

  It was hard to imagine that Carlotta would be jealous of anyone.

  “After high school, Della was a social diva—a real party girl, but she had a lot of style, you know? Classy. Dated senators’ sons, professional athletes, was always in the social column.” She paused and lifted her shoulders in a slow shrug. “Then…I don’t know, she just sort of dropped off the scene. There were rumors that she was in drug rehab, that she’d had a nervous breakdown, that she’d had a baby—but none of those things were ever verified. She started making appearances again, but she was like this scared little animal, like…like she’d been wounded.”

  “What year was that?”

  Carlotta squinted. “Ninety-four, ninety-five.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  Carlotta spoke behind her hand. “Personally, I always wondered if maybe Mrs. Underwood was a mental case, and if maybe Della inherited something.” She shrugged. “But that’s only speculation on my part.”

  “She’s never been married?”

  “No.”

  “Beck mentioned at the museum the other night that she used to date Roger LeMon.”

  Carlotta frowned. “Really? I don’t remember that. Not that I’m an expert on the Underwoods.”

  Jolie wet her lips. “Has Beck?”

  “Has Beck what?”

  Her cheeks tingled. “Ever been married?”

  A sly smile curved Carlotta’s mouth. “Not unless he got married while he was in exile.”

  “What do you mean, ‘in exile’?”

  “Beck worked for his dad, but it was well known that they didn’t always get along. Beck was a rebel, a real champion of the working man,” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “If you ask me, leading pickets against his dad’s companies had more to do with making his old man crazy than with sympathy for the lowly masses, but regardless, Daddy Underwood sent him packing.”

  Admiration bloomed in Jolie’s chest. Despite her best intentions, she stole another glance in Beck’s direction and saw that he had been cornered by a reporter and camera crew. Of course anyone covering award nominations for broadcasters and journalists would want to talk to the successor to the largest broadcasting company in the Southeast. A spotlight haloed his wide torso as he spoke into the extended microphone. His body language didn’t rea
d like a rebel…He looked thoughtful and distinguished, like someone on the verge of taking over the reins of a company he would most likely inherit. A crowd had gathered around him, and from the expressions on their faces, it was apparent that men wanted to be him, and women wanted to be with him.

  “He’s something, isn’t he?” Carlotta whispered with a sigh.

  Jolie jerked her head around, then flushed. “He’s…perplexing.”

  Carlotta linked her arm in Jolie’s and pulled her in the opposite direction. “He’s a man, Jolie—trust me, he’s not that complicated.”

  Jolie closed her eyes briefly, trying to sort her jumbled thoughts. With so many other matters pressing on her mind and her heart, she had no business wasting a brain cell on Beck Underwood.

  They followed the waiter’s directions through a set of glass doors to a covered patio. A chilly October wind had blown in, raising goose bumps over Jolie’s bare arms. She shivered, thinking she should have worn a coat, although she didn’t own anything nearly nice enough to wear over the jumpsuit.

  Pedestals holding bowls of white sand had been situated around the perimeter of the patio for the smokers. They were a forlorn bunch: social outcasts relegated to a covered concrete pad to practice their vice. The lighting was dim and depressing, and the strident whine of nearby electrical boxes filled the night air. Everyone huddled in their jackets, their backs to the wind, huffing and puffing.

  “And to think,” Carlotta muttered, “smoking used to be popular.” She handed her gin and tonic to Jolie to hold, then opened her purse and pulled out a box of menthol cigarettes. “Want one?”

  Jolie started to shake her head, then decided she could use something to calm her nerves and warm her up. “Okay.”

  Carlotta opened the box and slid out two cigarettes, stuck them both in her mouth and pulled out a slender mother-of-pearl lighter. She lit both cigarettes, then traded one to Jolie for the drink she’d been holding.

  Jolie drew on the cigarette until her adenoids stung, then coughed smoke into her hand. “I’ve never been much of a smoker.”

  Carlotta exhaled figure eights into the air. “I’ve quit twenty-seven times. I hate the way it makes my clothes smell.” She gestured to Jolie’s jumpsuit. “You’ll have to turn it inside out and run it on air-only in the clothes dryer for at least an hour. Make sure you tape cardboard around the tags so they don’t curl.”

  Jolie nodded obediently and attempted a more shallow inhale on the cigarette. She glanced over her shoulder, uneasy about the pitch-blackness surrounding the patio. A person could be standing a mere foot off the edge and no one would know it. Gary could be out there, watching her as he’d said. She shivered and took a step toward the center of the patio.

  Carlotta looked toward the door, then emitted a little laugh. “Well, if his liver doesn’t give out, his lungs will.”

  Jolie turned to see Kyle Coffee stumbling through the door, holding an unlit cigar that was at least nine inches long. He stopped next to a bowl of sand and set down his drink, then used both hands to search various pockets. Finally he pulled out what looked like one of the postcards that Sammy was handing out, rolled it lengthwise and used it to borrow a flame from the cigarette of the guy next to him. Jolie watched, poised to run in case Coffee set something—or himself—on fire, but he lit the tip of the cigar from the paper, then jammed the card into the sand without incident. He retrieved his drink, drew on the cigar until his face turned scarlet, and exhaled with a happy sigh. He didn’t notice them, didn’t notice much of anything, Jolie suspected. He seemed to be in a fog, shuffling around the edge of the concrete pad, tapping ashes into the grass.

  Jolie looked at Carlotta. “Do you suppose that Coffee is even more chatty when LeMon isn’t around?”

  “Let’s go see, shall we?”

  When they approached him, his glassy eyes made it clear that he didn’t remember them. They reintroduced themselves as Betty and Linda, and Carlotta congratulated him again on his nomination. He was loud and barely coherent. The cigar smelled like singed hair.

  “That’s an interesting tattoo,” Carlotta said in her perfectly clipped accent, pointing to his wrist.

  He frowned and leaned in. “Huh?”

  “Your tattoo, what does it mean?”

  Her words registered and he clamped the odorous cigar between his small teeth, then yanked back his sleeve to reveal a black tattoo the size and shape of a postage stamp. Jolie leaned in for a good look, and saw a border of what looked like four arms, one melding into another counterclockwise, the tiny hands on the corners. The center of the image was a filigree pattern that she couldn’t make out.

  “This,” he slurred around his cigar, “was the biggest mistake I ever made.”

  “You don’t like having a tattoo?” Jolie asked, enunciating clearly for his benefit.

  “Hell, I got a half dozen tattoos,” he said. “But this one has ruined my life.”

  Jolie’s skin prickled. “What makes you say that?”

  “His wife doesn’t like it,” Roger LeMon said behind them.

  Twelve

  Jolie jerked her head around and her heart slammed in her chest at the sight of LeMon’s thin mouth pressed into a flat line as he considered their threesome. He walked up and put his arm around Kyle Coffee’s shoulder, then pulled the man’s head close to his. “Isn’t that right, Kyle?” he asked in a tone that might have been good-natured except for his precise enunciation. “Your wife doesn’t like that tattoo because it’s in a more visible place than the others.”

  Kyle blinked at Roger dumbly, then nodded. “That’z right, Roger,” he lisped around the cigar in his mouth.

  Roger slapped him on the back. “I called you a cab, man. It’s time for you to say good night.”

  “Okay,” the man mumbled.

  “I’ll walk you out,” LeMon said, and guided his big friend toward the doors. LeMon turned his head to give Jolie a suspicious glare, then herded Coffee inside.

  Jolie exhaled.

  “Coffee was getting ready to tell us something,” Carlotta said. “I just know it!”

  “Maybe. I wanted to ask him if he knew Gary.”

  “So call him. Make up a story.”

  “Right,” Jolie murmured, except she doubted that Kyle Coffee would be as forthcoming when he was sober. And she was starting to feel as if this whole situation was getting out of hand. She didn’t know which details might be relevant and which details might take her on a tangent. Plus she was feeling antsy that she hadn’t heard from Gary again. She needed to talk to Detective Salyers, try to convince the woman to consider the possibility that Gary had been set up without revealing that she’d seen him. She gazed out into the inky darkness, and nearly swallowed her cigarette when she saw a figure move…and approach the patio.

  “Hiya,” Hannah said, stepping up onto the concrete.

  Jolie’s shoulders fell and a shiver overtook her. She needed food…and her life back.

  Even Carlotta looked a little spooked, but recovered quickly. “Oh, hey. You startled me.”

  Hannah wore skinny black pants and a long flowing jacket that looked a bit vampire-ish. Her hair was slicked back from her slender face and gelled into place. Her makeup was dark and dramatic, and her chandelier-style earrings looked like little swords strung together. Retro Gothica. A fetish, or a lifestyle? Jolie had the sudden sensation that she wouldn’t want to encounter Hannah Kizer on a dark street during the witching hour.

  Hannah looked at Jolie’s ensemble, wig to shoes. “Wow, I wouldn’t have recognized you.”

  “Carlotta helped.”

  “Yeah, I’ve told Carlotta if she ever wanted to go underground, she could pull it off.”

  Carlotta drew on her cigarette. Jolie wondered if she were thinking about the money she’d have to come up with by next Friday.

  Hannah looked back and forth between them. “Why are you two so jumpy?”

  Jolie sent a warning glance to Carlotta. She didn’t want to tell anyone
about Gary who didn’t need to know.

  “This party was a tough nut to crack,” Carlotta said, passing her half-smoked cigarette to Hannah, indicating she could finish it. “I’m Betty and she’s Linda. If I break into a British accent, just go along.”

  Hannah shrugged. “Okay.”

  On the way back inside, Jolie stopped to grind her cigarette into the bowl of white sand and noticed the postcard that Kyle Coffee had used to light his cigar. On impulse, she pulled the stiff, cream-colored card out of the sand and unrolled it, flicking off the charred ends.

  A party invitation…to Sammy Sanders’ house the following evening—the same invitation Jolie had seen her press into Beck Underwood’s hand.

  You’re invited to a champagne pajama party.

  Jolie lifted an eyebrow. She’d heard rumors at the agency about the parties that Sammy hosted at her posh Buckhead residence, but of course she’d never been invited. According to the postcard, the attire was sleepwear, the guest list was exclusive, and invitations had to be presented at the door. Apparently Sammy had moved through the crowd tonight, picking and choosing her guests.

  Jolie smiled wryly. Even disguised, she wasn’t good enough for Sammy.

  Tucking the creased invitation inside her purse, she followed Carlotta and Hannah back inside, where no one questioned Hannah’s entry. They headed for the food tables as Hannah told them which items to avoid and which items to sample. Jolie filled a small plate with non–red-sauce foods and ate enough to dispel the slight buzz she’d gotten from the wine—she needed to be clear-headed for the drive home.

  Beneath the wig, her scalp itched like crazy. The contact lenses felt gritty in her dry eyes. Her feet…Well, her feet might never be the same. She longed for a hot soak and a soft pillow and a positive balance in her savings account. She glanced around, expecting to see Roger LeMon lurking in the shadows, watching her. And God help her, she had hoped to catch another glimpse of Beck Underwood. She was sure the man would never work with her now, but she did want to thank him for being discreet, and try to offer some rationalization for her bizarre behavior…except she couldn’t think of an explanation other than the truth. And she wasn’t going to drag Beck into her drama, especially since he had an indirect connection to Roger LeMon through his sister Della.