Annie came down from the third floor, stunning in a royal blue dress of Evangeline’s that was probably very short on their hostess, but came to midthigh on Annie and looked fabulous. Annie’s blue eyes popped more than normal, which was saying something.
“You look pretty hot,” Cam said, ignoring Annie’s glare. “I hate to suggest this, when you’ve worked for forty-eight hours straight, but this might be the best time to get people shots. Your stuff is all on the landing.”
“Ack! All of it? Can you help me put some of it where nobody will be tempted to play with it? Happy, though, to shoot these people. Photographing them is definitely preferable to talking to them,” Annie mumbled. “Besides,” she said more loudly, “I am all over anything that makes tomorrow less work.”
Cam helped her stow the extra supplies in the den below, which was not being used. It was true Annie looked much more at home with a camera in her hand, and Cam breathed a sigh of relief as the party began in earnest. Everyone seemed to be having fun—everyone other than Ian, anyway.
CHAPTER 12
Ian’s expression was more sour than ever when he arrived with Hannah and Tom.
“Smile,” Annie said, shooting their picture, then letting out a quiet cackle that only Cam heard.
Cam raised an eyebrow at Annie, but humor was a better way to handle this than some of the other options Annie had probably considered, so she left it alone after that.
They only socialized briefly before Cam and Evangeline encouraged everyone to fill their plates. They had bibs for everyone, so some laughter ensued about bibs complementing semiformal clothing. Annie caught a lot of laughter on film, which had been the primary goal when Cam and Evangeline had debated the messy, traditional Southern options.
It was all going better than Cam had expected up until shouting called everyone’s attention to one corner of the room.
Tom and Hannah looked posed for a photo, leaning together, faces touching, but their expressions were frozen in clownish horror. Their smiles stuck, as if trying to call the moment back. Ian had stood and encroached on Annie’s space—something Annie didn’t tolerate from bullies, so she held her flash up and began a slow strobe in Ian’s face.
“Back off!” Her voice was low but unmistakable.
“Geez! Will you stop it?”
“Not until you back off! I am just doing my job, and I don’t need you in my face!”
“You don’t need shots of these two.”
“The magazine may not. But maybe Cam does to publicize this lovely event.” She smiled her most saccharine smile. Cam cringed.
“You’re a psychopath—a woman who bashes in windshields with crowbars, and I’m convinced you killed Jean-Jacques because he rejected you! You thought it was time to up the ante!”
Cam had made her way over, but Jane Duffy beat her to it; her low growl didn’t carry, but it still had the authority of a mama bear.
“You go cool off! If you can’t be professional, I’ll have you sent home first thing tomorrow!”
Ian yanked an elbow out of her reach and left via the balcony, instantly blown about in the storm. Joseph, who was closest to the door, stood flustered as the curtain flapped in the wind, then finally reached out to slide the door closed. Ian had not taken his eyes from Annie as he stomped out and toward the stairs that led to the garden. Annie turned back toward the crowd, trying unsuccessfully to blend as she snapped a few more pictures. She worked her way to Cam.
“Is your laptop here? My memory card is full,” she said after looking closely at her camera.
“Sure.”
Cam led Annie downstairs to the study where they’d stowed her spare equipment earlier. Annie sat to download pictures. Cam thought Annie probably had backup memory cards and that would have been faster, but she suspected this was also an effort on Annie’s part to get people to forget the scene.
Cam returned to the party, wanting to check in with Mr. Patrick, but she couldn’t find him.
“Neil went to get some bourbon. He thought it might set everybody back at ease,” Samantha said.
“Where’s Evangeline?”
“Tumblers. She said something about tumblers.” Samantha winked this time, a conspiratorial gesture, so Cam smiled back.
She supposed a little extra oblivion couldn’t hurt, but after five minutes she wasn’t the only one who had begun to wonder what the delay was. On the upside, by the time Annie returned, people had all but forgotten the row that had set all this in motion, though Cam still let out a breath when Evangeline finally reentered the room.
“Nowhere! Isn’t Neil back?” Evangeline’s hair was mussed, and Cam thought she might have dug through every cupboard in her kitchen looking for the tumblers.
Cam shook her head, but Evangeline spotted something else.
“There!” She stooped in front of a side table and pulled out a crystal tumbler. “Samantha, would you like to pull out enough of these for everyone, or go check on Neil? It shouldn’t take this long. The bourbon he likes best is on a top shelf, and I’m worried he may have fallen.”
“Evangeline, I can get Mr. Patrick,” Cam offered.
“Don’t be silly, honey. This house has a maze for a basement,” Samantha said, “but I know right where he is.” She ducked out.
“You can help me wash these out, Cam. They’re pretty dusty—haven’t served bourbon for twenty in quite some time.” She laughed as she stood to look for a tray to put the glasses on.
They passed Mr. Patrick without seeing Samantha as they took the tray to wash glasses, and then all had a great laugh when finally guests, bourbon, and tumblers finally converged in the same room. Everybody toasted “to bourbon worth the wait.”
Annie, Cam noted, had caught much of this on film and was glad something positive had come from her spat with Ian.
When everyone finished eating, Samantha brought in the brownies. People began to rave about them the moment they took their first bites. The night seemed to be salvaged, and was punctuated by the arrival of a spectacular lightning show for ten whole minutes before Cam heard retching behind her.
“Great,” she mumbled. She turned and saw Barney, the terrier, choking, before he projectile vomited on the corner of a Persian rug.
“Evangeline! I don’t know how it happened, but it looks like Barney got hold of a brownie!”
Evangeline leaped from a love seat where she’d been talking to Madeline Leclerc, rushed over, and then shouted for a servant to clean up the mess. She picked up Barney carefully.
“What happened, big fella? You get something that make your tum tum…” Cam imagined a lot of people spoke baby talk to their pets, but that didn’t make it any easier to listen to.
“I’m going to be sick!” Before Cam could clear her mind of the impression that this announcement resulted from the baby talk to the pooch, Joseph rushed toward the balcony, handkerchief to his mouth.
Cam nearly cricked her neck as she caught Joseph sprinting outside, only to be pummeled with rain. Mr. Patrick looked at Joseph’s plate in concern. Joseph had left only crumbs of his brownie.
“I think the brownies have been poisoned!” Mr. Patrick shouted. People around him began to gasp, staring at their dessert plates.
“Nonsense, Neil. I feel fine, and I’ve eaten one,” Samantha said. Cam thought maybe she’d actually had two or three, but that wasn’t her business, and it didn’t make the point any less valid. If anything, it made Samantha more right.
“Maybe only some of them were poisoned!” he persisted.
Cam couldn’t hold in an annoyed sigh before turning toward Annie, who looked stunned. Annoyed sigh or not, worry knotted Cam’s belly. She knew the implications of such an accusation, even one that had no merit. She stepped forward.
“That doesn’t even make any sense. I helped bake these. They’re fine,” Cam said to deaf ears.
“He’s going into convulsions!” Evangeline shrieked. At first Cam thought she meant Joseph, but Joseph must have still been ou
tside. Then she saw the dog.
Neil Patrick rushed his wife and the sick dog out toward the car. People muttered uncomfortably for some minutes after their hosts left, and then Joseph stumbled back in from the balcony. Cam thought he’d gone down the balcony steps to the covered porch below and then come in from through the lower level. He was soaked and looked very ill.
“You!” Joseph accused Annie. “You made me sick!”
“No, Joseph, wait!” Cam stepped between the two. “I think Ian has been trying to frame Annie from the beginning.”
Joseph blanched. “Ian?”
Everyone turned and stared. Cam hadn’t meant to blurt it, but she couldn’t stand another person blaming Annie for yet another thing she didn’t do.
“Maybe he put something on them once the brownies got here so she’d look guilty.”
“How would he know she made them?” Joseph didn’t like to be contradicted and it showed.
“Tom and Hannah were there when I asked her to make them. Is it possible you mentioned it?” she looked at them hopefully.
Tom shook his head, but Hannah answered, “Maybe,” which was enough to create doubt. Cam smiled at her gratefully.
“Maybe we should talk to Ian,” Samantha suggested.
“Or maybe we should call Officer Moreno. We can let the police sort this out,” Joseph suggested. “I’m going to call.”
He left again, cell phone in hand.
Annie had made a noise when Joseph spoke, but Cam pinched her. Protesting about the police would look bad. No one other than she and Rob knew about the romantic debacle between Annie and Jake. Cam only now remembered Annie didn’t know what she’d learned from Rob. She edged closer to Annie.
“She’s his sister,” she said to her friend.
“Who’s whose sister?”
“The woman. Jake’s sister.”
“What?”
“The woman and boy you saw with Jake. Sister. Nephew. Should I spell that?”
“But…”
“N-E-P-H…”
“But Cam!”
“I know. You dumped garbage on his porch. He’ll get over it.”
Annie still looked distraught, and then Cam was brought back to their other reality—poisoned brownies—by an exclamation from Madeline Leclerc.
“I wonder if maybe she caught who did it on film.”
It took a minute for Cam to realize Madeline meant the pictures Annie had taken.
“Madeline, you’re a lifesaver! But… the brownies were in the kitchen.”
“We could at least see who left and when.” She looked pleased with herself, but then her face fell and she seemed to change her mind. “No… I’m sure everyone was gone at some point.”
“That’s true. You know, though… Ian left,” Cam said, grasping at straws.
“He did!” Madeline said.
“While I agree about Ian leaving and possibly having a motive to do this, this was hardly premeditated. What kind of lunatic carries poison around?” Samantha asked.
Cam frowned. She wished more people would buy into the solution that was best for all of them.
“It’s a good idea, though. Annie, let’s look at pictures,” Samantha said.
Annie ran down the stairs to get her camera from the study where she’d left it earlier, and returned moments later, a stunned expression on her face. “It’s gone!”
“What?” Cam asked.
“The camera I was using! Gone!”
“Well, it can’t have gone too far!”
“Unless the poisoner took it!” Annie said.
“You just had it, didn’t you?”
“I traded! The digital one I used earlier was downstairs!” Annie’s voice squeaked in frustration.
Cam wondered why there was no sound of a siren yet, or at least a knock downstairs.
She stepped out onto the second-floor landing to call Jake and tell him that in addition to the alleged poisoning, Annie’s camera had gone missing.
“What alleged poisoning?” Jake asked when she called.
“Didn’t Joseph call you?”
“Maybe. I’m not at the station. I’m on my way over.”
That made sense; she’d called his cell number, because she happened to have it, but the station was the first number on his card and was therefore the one Joseph must have called, though she did think the police dispatcher might have sent another car, one that could have arrived a bit more quickly.
As they waited, Cam and a servant cleared plates. Cam worried the treasurer would fuss over paying Annie for the brownies, in spite of the fact Cam knew the brownies had arrived sans poison. She couldn’t grasp, though, who would have messed with them besides Ian. It was a puzzle.
Annie continued to search frantically for her camera, but Cam suspected the guilty party had hidden it well, and without the Patricks at home, they could hardly begin turning the house inside out—though the idea that the camera had been squirreled away within the Patricks’ sprawling mansion suggested the culprit was someone familiar with the house. Unfortunately, that included all the Garden Society board and household staff, as well as the Patricks themselves. At least, it eliminated Annie. Unfortunately, it also probably eliminated Ian, unless he’d come back in through the downstairs door and took it with him.
When Jake arrived, he began to organize people for questioning about the poisoning and the missing camera, but he’d barely gotten started when Hannah and Tom ran into the drawing room, Hannah crying. She gasped for breath and sputtered rain out of her face, trying to speak and mostly failing. They dripped all over the Persian rug, which didn’t help.
“Ian. Dead.” Tom didn’t appear to be breathing much easier than Hannah. Cam suspected Hannah was more used to exercise, but at least he wasn’t sobbing, so he could get his point across.
“Show me,” Jake said. When others started to follow, he held out a hand to stop them. “Just me.”
Cam sat, dumbfounded, and then looked at Annie, whose brows were knit together in confusion or annoyance.
“Now we really need evidence of who left,” Annie muttered.
Cam nodded, but it was reflex.
“Otherwise these buzzards will pin it on me.”
“What?” That startled Cam out of her haze.
“When I downloaded the memory card—I was gone about ten minutes. Somebody will have noticed.”
Cam sighed, knowing Annie was right. How could they prove where Annie really was?
“You did download the memory card?”
“Yes.”
“So we show them what you were doing. The computer has a time stamp.”
Annie looked around. “I think it’s better—in the long run—if nobody knows those pictures got saved.”
“But—”
“Cam, someone stole my camera, probably to get rid of evidence. Those pictures might have it, and your laptop has a short life if we go public.”
Cam’s first selfish thought was of all the work she had saved on her laptop.
“What about just the police?” Cam suggested.
“Oh, yeah, because Jake is now my biggest advocate.”
Cam frowned at Annie’s sarcasm. “He’s honest, at least.”
“Says his sister.”
“It is his sister!”
“Look—share tomorrow if you have to. But back it up tonight. A little paranoia never hurt anybody!”
Cam snorted but saw the sense in Annie’s proposal. “Deal.”
Sirens approached as the Garden Society sat growing more depressed. They knew the routine this time. Nobody got to leave until they were excused. For a while Cam tried to act cheerful, but Annie told her soundly to just shut up or not only would she lose her eyebrows, but she’d also be sporting a Mohawk. It was a relief, actually, as nobody had believed her cheerful tone or words, anyway.
About ten minutes after the arrival of his siren-blaring backup, Jake returned to the house.
“Nobody left?”
Everyone jus
t stared blankly in response.
“No. We’ve done this dance before,” Cam said.
At the word “dance,” Annie and Jake glared at each other, and Cam regretted her word choice.
“I’ll need to interview all of you. I wish I hadn’t left you alone, but it was urgent. Any minute now, though, a sergeant will join me and we can get started.”
He was a lot less friendly this time around. Cam felt guilty for some reason, as if they’d shattered Jake’s innocence. It was ridiculous, of course, as a cop could hardly be all that innocent, and the Garden Society as a whole hadn’t done anything wrong, but she felt it anyway. Then she remembered the other place she was supposed to be.
“Shoot!”
“What?” Annie asked.
“My dad was meeting us at my place.”
“Us? Like you and me?” Annie asked.
“Yes, us. He thinks of you like his third daughter, you know.”
Annie looked uncomfortable. “I’ve asked too much of him.”
Cam was caught off guard. “Like what?”
Annie shook her head. “I’ll tell you later. It’s not a good time. But it’s his fault—for being the cool dad and all.”
Annie’s eyes were glassy. Cam wondered if Annie was on the verge of revealing the big secret her dad had hinted at—the one Ian had so badly misrepresented. Or had he? Cam studied Annie more closely and realized how devastated she looked. Was it possible she had killed Ian? She knew Annie wouldn’t poison everyone to get one person, but…
She bit the inside of her cheek to stop this train of thought. The wine and stress were combining badly. The last thing she needed was to question her friends that way, especially her best friend. Annie wouldn’t harm anyone.
But then Ian had provoked her badly.
“Yoo-hoo! Cam? Where are you?”
Cam jerked herself to attention. Annie’s face was inches from hers.
“Maybe we should put some coffee on?” Annie suggested.
The Azalea Assault Page 14