“Whenever you’re vomiting, it’s not the first thing which comes to mind.”
I nodded. “Besides, if he thought he was about to die, he’d have shouted about it, accused everyone of trying.” From his display of peacocking throughout the early evening, it was clear he wasn’t averse to throwing around accusations.
“Who else?”
Everyone. “Ex-business partners, ex-lovers, ex-employees.”
“Someone who wanted revenge.”
I nodded. Revenge.
We continued to talk over names and people around us, but once Yvonne joined the table, huffing into her seat across from us, the conversation stopped.
“You speak with Paul yet?” she asked, rolling her head on her neck. “All thing is barmy.”
I removed the napkin from view, sitting them on my lap beneath the table. “Terrible,” I nodded.
“Earl was telling me about his demands,” she said. “He wanted champagne on arrival, a bouquet of flowers for the woman he was bringing, and he’d even requested to have a dressing gown embroidered with his name on the back to commemorate the event.”
I looked around, at the mention of the women who was hanging from his arm earlier. She wasn’t in sight, probably off somewhere talking to the police, or perhaps she did it.
“Did you know the women he brought with him?”
She shrugged. “Nobody does by the sounds of it,” she said. “Diane almost died when she found out he was bringing a plus one to this thing.”
I hummed. I remembered the moment well.
Ten Days Earlier
Wednesday 20th February 2019
I had offered to help Diane with the arrangements for the event. I was feeling like a spare part in the offices. I’d submitted all my articles for publishing, and had very little left to do, especially as I didn’t have a lot of time left before moving on to the new job.
Diane called me into the small board room, and on the table, was a giant sheet of lilac paper. At the top, was the scrawling of the seating chart.
There were thirteen tables, each pictured as large white circles, and around each table were smaller circles; six to a table.
Diane planted her hand to her head. “I wanted a maximum of ten tables,” she grumbled. “Ten.” Holding her hands up and extending her fingers out.
“Oh?” I looked over the seating chart and the map of the hall we were going to be in. The last time anything like this had happened, was for the 30th anniversary, and I’d only been here for two years at that time.
“You’re on the second table,” she said. “In front of the stage, besides my table.”
“Oh? With who else?”
She pounded the sheet with her hand. “Everyone else is all the way to the back.”
“So, the last tables are the ones you really don’t want here?” I asked with a slight grin. “Because that can be a secret.”
She shrugged. “People know their importance based on where they’re seated.”
“So, who should I be wary of then?”
A scowl formed across her lips. “Anyone who’s invested anything in the publishing company,” she said. “Everyone gets an invite, and I hope and pray they don’t send back their RSVP slip.”
“Did you have to?”
Diane swanned around, her batwing white blouse moving in the gust of her movement. “Patrick’s decision,” she said, not making eye contact. “And by that, I mean, he’s trying to keep the investors open for future business, and not inviting any of them is like shooting your doctor, and then shooting yourself in the foot, and being shocked you don’t have a doctor to help.”
That was definitely one way of putting it. “I know you have advertisers for the magazine, are they—”
“A few of them, yes,” she replied. “But I only do business with people and businesses I like. Patrick’s side of things is the worst.”
I didn’t know any of the names, other than the people I worked with in the office, and some of the freelancers, but even they weren’t in the front few tables. I had invited Ruth along with me, and from what I could see, we were going to be seated with Yvonne, her husband, Howard, and his wife. The perfect team, in my opinion.
On the first table, Diane and Patrick, and some names I didn’t know. Possibly their friends or major business associates. I searched for Suzanne’s name; on the third table, she had invited another as well—fiancé, husband, boyfriends; whoever he was.
“Finley Carson,” she scoffed. “Finley.” She dotted her finger to the circle with his name, away from all tables, currently alone. “I sat him a little far back, hopefully far enough where I won’t have to interact with him.”
“Who is he?”
She scoffed. “A thorn in my side.”
“How so?”
“For starters, he weaselled his way into this event,” she said. “Now he’s brought a plus one. A plus one.” She shook her head.
“What does he do?” I asked. The name wasn’t familiar on my ears, he could’ve been anyone.
“A little bit of everything,” she said. “But for the event, he’s here on behalf of an advertiser.”
I glanced at the seating chart to see if I noticed any names around him. I didn’t.
“The main issue with him is how he doesn’t get along with anyone,” she said. “Mainly his ex-business partner, Spencer.”
“Do you need my help with it?” I asked.
“I need a fresh set of eyes,” she said. “Where should he go?”
SIX
Diane’s voice echoed through the hall, travelling through the sound system of the speakers. “Leave me be,” she said.
The jazz band cut.
Glancing around the room, I watched as Diane strutted out from the corner, chased after her by Patrick, her husband. She dropped her microphone, letting a drone of static spit through the speakers.
“My birthday is ruined!” she shouted, stopping at her table. Patrick pulled his wife into his arms, before gesturing to the band to start up again.
All eyes were on the couple as they seemed to talk in hushed whisperings. My eyes were on watch, attempting to decipher anything they were saying and the way their bodies were moving.
“Think she’s had too much to drink,” Yvonne offered up her thoughts.
“As we all should be,” Ruth nodded. “It’s a party.”
Through a furrowed brow, I glanced to her. It might have been a party, but there wasn’t anything to celebrate, at least not while a dead body lay in the bathroom floor with a plastic bag covering it out of view—while I hadn’t seen it, I was living in assumption.
“It was a really important event for her,” I said. “I don’t blame her for being angry. The police are crawling the place and interrogating everyone.” I tilted my head to the side. “And I think she should understand, someone is dead, and the faster we know who did it, the faster we can all get back to the celebration.”
Yvonne raised her glass to the comment. “Then tomorrow, we can all enjoy hot stone massages.” Pausing before putting it to her lip. “Who did it?” she repeated. “What do you mean?”
I forced myself to laugh. “Force of habit,” I said. “You know, finding those dead bodies.”
Yvonne snorted. “Maybe you’re cursed,” she laughed.
I smiled back, I hoped she wasn’t right.
Diane and Patrick sat at the table, their voices growing louder as more people joined them, including Yvonne’s husband, Earl.
“Has anyone asked how long they’ll be?” Diane’s voice grew. She pushed out from her chair to view the people and officers around the room. “I’m just glad they haven’t stopped the band, or pulled the plug on the chocolate fountain.”
“We’re in lockdown,” Patrick said, almost as if he’d told her for the seventh time. “They’ll get to the bottom of it, and it’ll all be solved soon.”
I folded the paper napkins on my lap and crammed them into my small clutch purse.
Smash.
/> “I told you, I’ve only known him a week!” a woman shouted.
The same woman Finley had brought to the party. She now had a knee-length leather coat jacket covering her body, tied at the waist, with both arms folded across the chest.
The officer in front of her took a step back.
“I told you everything I know,” she said. “Now, can I leave?”
I didn’t watch further for an answer.
Yvonne stood and gave a wave before she joined her husband at Diane’s table.
“Everyone must think they’re doing a once over of the scene and nothing much else,” I said. “Nobody knows they think it’s a murder.”
“I’m sure they’re getting clued up,” Ruth added. “There’s officers everywhere, and not to mention anything, they’ve put the place on lockdown.”
For a place where there was a murder suspect supposedly on the loose, nobody was reacting like it. Nobody was reacting as if they’d heard news of a killer, but everyone knew there was a dead body.
“What do you think is going through everyone’s heads?” I asked.
Looking around, everyone was helping themselves to food, helping themselves to more champagne. They looked over their phones, smiled to each other, talked. There was no overwhelming panic, and nothing to say these people were any wiser.
“Why they served such small food portions,” she grumbled back. “Why they only employed male wait staff to serve us, you know, nothing important, obviously.”
I had noticed both observations. “Diane’s choosing,” I answered in short. She was very particular about what she wanted at her party and the magazine event, and she wanted to be waited on by men, young men, specifically, with silver plates in hand and champagne on constant supply and flow. I remembered that much, at least.
“Of course,” she replied, wryly smiling back at me. “The dream, right.”
Pulling the napkins from my purse once again. “Who do you think could’ve done it?”
“Sounds like poison,” she said. “So, my money is on a woman.”
“A scorned woman he hired?” I posed.
“If the woman who just had a tantrum was anything to go by,” she sighed with a nod of her head in the direction where the woman had been standing, arguing with a police officer. “But if he’s here, he’s probably rich, he could pay himself out of whatever box they cornered him in.”
“That’s the problem with people and money,” I said.
Harry had always told me, the people he did business with were the type of people who could buy people. It was perhaps one of the reasons I never knew much about his business dealings, he wanted to keep me away from it all.
The boat trips out on the lake, I’d have spent all my time talking with wives or girlfriends while the men stood by the wheel with their beers in hand, talking business, and I was discussing different coloured wood panelling for a new decking in a house I’d probably never visit or see.
“What are you thinking about?” Ruth asked, as if noting I was away in the space between my ears; inside my own thoughts. “Because I think if Paul told you and let on more information than he’s done before, it could be a cry for help.”
He was Harry’s brother, after all. And the two of them did act similarly, I saw it in the way they would both go in all guns ablaze and then not know how to apologise. Of course, I rarely saw that side to Harry, only during his last years when we knew he was dying, and the stress would get to him all sudden in a heat.
I set the napkins on the table. “It must be someone here, and I think you’re correct with the poison,” I said, tapping a finger on the napkin. “But there must be hundreds, if not thousands of poisons, and I’m sure there are business folk here who dabble in the pharma world, you know, research funds, donations; plaques and names on hospital wings kinda thing.”
“You should ask Diane,” she said, nodding to the table across from us.
Diane was currently in no state to talk about the people she’d invited, she’d had a few too many drinks in her system and was being consoled by her husband, seated as he hushed into her ear and kept her from wandering off. Not a state I’d ever seen her in before, she’d always been refined and poised.
“Later,” I said, although my focus was on her husband, he knew more about the businesspeople here.
As more interviews were conducted, people inside the ballroom grew louder, restless. There was panic, almost as if everything was catching up to them, everything was hitting them all at once.
I caught sight of people wandering and typing furiously on their phones.
The band cut all music, ending with a dun of the drum. A police officer stood at the side of the stage, most probably to take their statements. But they’d been there all night, unless they witnessed something which might’ve been hard to do, especially with the stage lights on them and in their faces constantly.
“Tomorrow’s headlines are going to be historic,” Ruth mumbled.
“Why?”
“In a room full of publishing people, they’re going to cover all angles of this thing.”
And that’s when the thought struck me, watching as people tapped away on their phones; they knew exactly what was going on. This was all about the optics; this was all about what they were going to say. It was all about publishing, which magazines or newspapers were going to be taking on the article about the events.
People with writers in their phones, calling them and giving them all the details of what was happening. The industry was going to have a field day in the Sunday papers, but only if they could get the articles out before printing deadlines; they’d have only two or three hours until the late-night deadline hit.
In the corner of my eye, Suzanne and her plus one were scribbling down notes on a small ruled pad of paper. Her head popping up to peer out and around at everyone, observing everything descend.
“Trust Suzanne to be all over this,” I said, scowling my brow, as if a fellow journalist wouldn’t be interested in taking on an article they also happened to be part of.
“You start your new job on Monday,” Ruth said. “This could be your first piece.”
I nodded. “But, how can I even begin to sift through all these people to find out who actually played a part in his murder.”
“Better question,” she said, snapping her finger. “How can we find out who Paul suspects, and narrow our list down.”
That was the question, and without outright stealing his notepad, which I’m sure was a crime with an arrestable offence, all I had to go on was that he somewhat trusted me to help him.
SEVEN
Focused on finding out what Paul knew, I watched closely from my table as Paul approached different people to question them. At first, I thought it was random chance he was zigzagging across the floor, and then I realised something.
Everyone he came into contact with, had been an associate of Finley’s, and he was building a frame of people. From one table to the next, gathering information, taking a new name, and then quizzing the next person in question.
“Diane told me about Finley’s ex-business partners,” I said lowly to Ruth. “It makes sense, they were each seated at different tables.” I didn’t know any by name, so I used visual cues and markers to jot down who they were.
“Table eight, bald with red dinner jack,” she replied. “Looks like a Bond villain.”
I chuckled. “All he needs is a set of metal plated teeth and a permanent grimace.”
Paul had just spoken to him, he had neither, a grimace or plated teeth. He did, however, seem to suppress a smile, as if happy and elated by the news of Finley, assuming that’s what they’d been talking about.
So far, the list had four additional people on it since watching Paul go back and forth from left to right, speaking to people. All of them men, which didn’t corroborate the theory it was a woman’s poisoning intent.
“They’ve stopped serving drinks,” Ruth observed.
My head spun to catch th
e glimpse of a server. “They must be having a group questioning,” I said. “If anyone saw anything, it would be the sober work staff. And they’re constantly walking around, they probably know names and faces better than we do.”
I spotted two young women in deflated chef hats meander through the people in approach of the food table being set out along the side of the wall.
“A buffet?” Ruth mumbled.
“No, no, no,” Diane’s voice called out from behind me.
“Stay here,” Patrick said.
Her aim had been straight for the two women, of which Patrick was now charging towards instead of her.
Diane’s eyes settled on me. She smiled.
“Eve,” she said. “Come over.”
She was alone, everyone else at their table was away, either at her orders or Patrick’s words.
I looked to Ruth.
“I should call Frank,” she said. “Maybe he knows something about those symptoms, and if it was poison.”
I peered beneath the table to see Charlie, he was curled up, hiding from the noise. His frowning face looked back at me.
“What’s up?” I asked down to him. “You tired?”
He stood and shuffled around in a circle before laying back on the ground, facing away from me this time. Someone was in a bad mood.
“Want me to take him with me?” Ruth asked.
“He’ll be fine,” I said.
Diane tapped at her table with her hand twice.
She sat abnormally straight on her seat with both her hand laid palm down on the table. Her eyes closed ever-so-slightly.
“You ok?” I asked, taking Patrick’s seat at her side.
“No, no I’m not.”
“Couldn’t have happened on a worse day,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
She peeked at me, giving me side eye. “It’s not your fault.”
I knew that, but I wanted to know what made her so sure, considering I had put her name down on my list of people it could’ve been. “Have you spoken to Paul?”
“Your brother-in-law, the inspector?” she moved to place her hands at her lap. “Yes, he told me he’s doing everything in his power to find out what happened, then we can go back to the event as planned.”
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