The game was on.
Grams and I joined Lizzy standing with Fabio and Raelyn standing about ten feet from the stage.
Raelyn sipped her champagne absently and drifted about fifteen feet from us. Vann walked up to her and said something I couldn’t hear. She gave a half-hearted smile and shook her head. Her eyes were glistening as he walked away. What could he have said to her?
“Do you have your clues?” I asked Fabio.
“We do,” Fabio said. “I have enjoyed this playacting before.”
“You’re gonna need my help,” Grams said, rubbing against him and leaving a trail of pink fuzz on his tuxedo sleeve.
Fabio winced.
“Raelyn returned to our group. Please direct me to the bathroom.” Her eyes were definitely moist.
“The nearest one is that way,” Lizzy pointed.
Raelyn disappeared into the noisy crowd.
“She doesn’t seem like she’s in a party mood,” I said to Fabio.
“My companion has been in a funk, I think you call it, all day. I hoped coming tonight might lift her spirits. Please don’t let her know you noticed. If the dear girl feels she has brought a cloud to the party it will only make her sadder.”
So it wasn’t something Vann said—maybe.
“Is there anything we can do?” Lizzy asked in a soft voice.
“There is nothing to be done.” He let his hands fall to his sides. “Today is the fifth anniversary of the death of her brother.”
That gave me a jolt. She seemed out of sorts at the shop yesterday, but I didn’t suspect anything this heavy. “What happened to him?”
“He drowned. Please let’s put on our happy faces before she returns.”
Grams slipped her hand into Fabio’s, unmindful of what he just shared. “Let’s join that group. They seem to be onto something. See how excited they are?” The little dynamo tugged the handsome bodyguard away from Lizzy and me.
Beyond Grams someone was parting the crowd. The queen of bad ideas. “Don’t look now, Lizzy, but the crazed maid is closing in on us.”
Jaimie carried two glasses of champagne. Lizzy and I reached for them but Jaimie pulled them back and gulped one dry. “Get your own.”
“Maids don’t drink with the guests,” I said. “Besides, your nose is falling off.”
“I just overheard the most peculiar thing.” She knocked back the other glass of champagne. “It wasn’t Chip’s idea to buy me the tanning bed—Vann insisted I would love it.”
A passing waiter took Jaimie’s empty champagne flutes. “Since when does he advise my husband on gifts for me?”
She motioned us to come closer. “Vann’s a total tightwad. Muffy told me he saves everything. He has a giant ball of rubber bands and a carton of used paperclips. He even saves string!” She snorted. “If Chip’s listening to him, I’ll get a new water heater for my next birthday.”
I laughed out loud. Jaimie could be a pain but she was funny. “How did Chip get tied up with him?”
“Sort of my fault. I introduced him to Chip when we were planning on building this place.” Jaimie waved her hand, knocking her wig askew. “Zippity do da! Next thing I know Vann is our contractor. He may be tight with his own money but he knows how to spend ours.”
I noticed several people studying their clue sheets and looking in our direction.
“You’d better go do your maid thing. People are staring.”
“Back to spreading misleading information about the intrepid Mickey Spleen.” She melted into the crowd.
Muffy was standing near the bar absently fanning herself with the clue sheet. I pointed Lizzy in the direction of the leather-skinned beach bunny. “Much as I hate to, we need to get into Muffy’s head. We’ll seduce her with our cold cream.”
As we approached her, she got another glass of champagne from the bartender then turned toward us and said, “I can’t believe Miss Center-of-attention agreed to play the corpse and miss the party.”
That hit a little too close to home but I avoided lying by saying, “You know Jaimie. Willing to do anything to make a party a success.”
“No, I don’t know that Jaimie. I know the one who’ll do anything to make herself a success. Over anyone’s body.” She shifted gears without missing a beat. “You two run that cold cream shop on Starfish Boulevard, don’t you?”
“That would be us. It’s called Nonna’s Cold Cream. Right across from the beach,” Lizzy said.
The blonde raised her eyebrows. “I’ve spent too much time in the sun. Do you have anything that might help my dry skin?”
“We do home makeovers.” Lizzy pretended to giggle. “Not the house, the lady of the house. Deep cleansings, peels, and moisturizing facials.”
“They’re free beauty treatments,” I sweetened the offering.
“Free, huh?” She nibbled on her lip for an instant. “I might like one of those.”
“How about Monday at about four?” Lizzy said.
We left our little chat clutching the Tassels’ home address and a date to snoop.
Chapter 34
The guests stood in small gatherings comparing notes and discussing clues.
Lizzy and I shared a secret chuckle as we stood at the fringe of one group enjoying the breeze from the open balcony door.
The players peppered their not so brilliant deductions with nonexistent clues. This group, like the others, was in accord—the butler did it. No one suspected Lizzy.
The sound of a blood-curdling female cry sent the stubble on my legs standing at attention.
One short scream—enough to silence the entire room. The band stopped playing.
Where was Jaimie? Did Chip script a double-cross?
“Mrs. Toast! Mrs. Toast! Are you dead again?” The soft sloshing of the waves didn’t muffle Mel’s deep voice floating up from the ground level patio.
Lizzy dashed to the beachside staircase. I performed a strappy stiletto stumble walking down the stairs behind her. A herd of people stomped after us, everyone in search of the screamer.
Mel lay crosswise on top of a blonde who lay face down on the Mediterranean tile deck. He scrambled to get up. Lizzy and I pulled him off the body and helped the old gent stagger to his feet.
“Is this part of the show?” He grabbed Lizzy’s shoulder to steady himself.
I pulled the police whistle from my shirt and gave a long hard blow.
A moment later Kal tore around the side of the house and raced to the blonde on the ground. He held his arms out. “Stay back!”
“Is it Jaimie?” Lizzy whispered.
Chip came flying down the stairs, shoving partiers out of his way, and knocking the foam-suited maid off the steps. She rolled to the ground like a roly-poly round- bottomed doll.
“Jaimie! Darling!” He fell to his knees at the side of the body.
“I think it’s Raelyn!” I whispered to Lizzy.
Kal shone a flashlight on the blonde’s face confirming my guess.
He knelt alongside Chip and felt for her pulse and then shook his head.
“Chip! Chip!” The voice came from the foot of the stairs.
The distraught husband turned in the direction of the chubby-suited maid, his eyeballs spinning. The voice was his wife’s. The body was not. Neither was the dead woman lying at his knees.
Chip ran to Jaimie, hesitating to embrace her. She yanked off her wig and pulled out her fake dentures. He wrapped his arms around her as best he could. They indulged in a long, tearful kiss. He moved to the bottom of my suspect list.
“Lizzy, stick with Jaimie.” I whispered. “This is likely a weird accident but it could be a mistaken-identity murder. We can’t take any chances.”
Kal placed a call to Robbie for backup and an alert for the medical examiner.
“What do you think?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “A fall from the third-floor balcony. The second-floor living room terrace probably wouldn’t have killed her. Who is she? Has she been drinking?”<
br />
“Her name’s Raelyn Smith. She’s Sophia Napoli’s personal assistant.” I glanced up at the third level—bedrooms and a widow’s walk with a low railing. “She’s here with Sophia’s bodyguard, Fabio Santoro. She had at least two glasses of champagne.”
“The actress is in Starfish Cove? I knew you expected her but I didn’t think it was so soon. Warn Grams to keep this out of the Silverfish Gazette. If the paparazzi get wind of it they’ll be all over it.”
“No!” Fabio broke through the crowd. He leapt from the stairs and rushed to Raelyn’s body. “Nooo! This can’t be!” He looked up at me. “What happened?”
“Don’t know yet.” I put my hands on his shoulders and eased him back. “There’s nothing we can do for her. We don’t want to contaminate the scene.”
Grams stood next to Mel giving him a visual description of the action as it unfurled. “This is the real McCoy. The body that tripped you was honest-to-Pete dead. Looks like Jaimie face down but they’re saying it might not be. There was another blonde here who looked like her.”
She glared at Chip who stood huddled with his arms around Jaimie.
A wail of sirens sliced through the hypnotic montage. Red and blue lights ricocheted off the clouds, turning the sky a bruised shade of purple.
Most of the guests returned to the house to escape the disturbing scene. A few morbid Lookie-Loos lingered as Robbie began to unspool a roll of yellow crime scene tape. Starfish Cove could save a bundle if Jaimie supplied her own tape.
“Olive,” The M.E. greeted me with a nod and set his bag on the patio floor. After a brief chat with Kal he began to examine Raelyn.
While Robbie guarded the body, Kal attempted to corral the guests, then began the process of taking them individually into the kitchen to interview them. His investigation would be like looking for a needle on the beach.
Grams was trying to comfort Fabio. With Kal and Robbie tied up, I decided to check out the balcony directly above Raelyn’s body before the wind or the rain cloud moving in disturbed that scene.
“Robbie, pass me one of your flashlights.” He had two. I needed one. Used to taking orders from me, he handed over a high-intensity light the size of a pen.
Some of the more curious couples, including Vann and Muffy, lingered on the outside staircase between the partiers and the beach patio.
“Excuse me. Excuse me,” I said, carving my way past a dazed Muffy and a surly-looking Vann Tassel.
He grabbed my arm. “Hey, Olive Mental Examiner, what’s the rush?”
Through all the confusion of the party, Vann and I hadn’t been introduced but he obviously knew who I was. I stopped and said, “I’m on my way to the bathroom,”
while thinking Grams’ candlestick would be handy right now.
His expression was neutral, but something behind his beady blue eyes made my skin crawl. “Chip said you work with the cops. A profiler or something? So you can tell by looking at me I’m not inclined to murder blondes. Now brunettes…that’s another story.”
What kind of callous dolt would be making jokes with a dead girl lying thirty feet away? Hmmm, I had answered my own question. Darn, where was that candlestick?
I’m against violence, but he could be the exception to the rule.
“How about using your influence to get us a break so we can get out of here? Muffy’s pooped.”
Muffy was more popped than pooped. She had that glazed look that comes from too much champagne and not enough chicken livers.
Vann Tassel deserved a break all right. Arm, leg, skull, whatever. I got a really bad vibe from the guy. Not much I could do at the moment except annoy him. “Nobody can leave until Kal says so. And that might take longer for you after he hears about your brunette comment.” I decided to yank him a little more. “Rumor has it she’s wearing a blonde wig over her dark hair.”
He turned ashen. “Hey, that was a joke. Don’t tell Kal I said that. We’ll be here all night.”
I spun away from him and continued up the stairs to the third floor before he could see the satisfaction on my face.
His voice trailed after me. “Be very careful. The stairs are slippery.”
Chapter 35
The approaching rain cloud propelled me beyond a sensible pace. I speed-wobbled
across the balcony outside the sliding glass bedroom doors. I skidded to a stop well short of the railing as my own words about mistaken-identity murder sunk in.
The killer would have had to catch Raelyn at the precise moment she was leaning on the balcony rail to push her over without seeing her face. However, he could have seen who he thought was Jaimie, tried to heave her, saw it was Raelyn who could now identify him as an attempted murderer, and flipped her over anyway.
Uh oh! My can of hairspray was tucked in my purse downstairs in the study. Unarmed, aside from a pocket full of bullets I could throw, I was at the mercy of a possible flipper-killer.
I peered into the room to my right. The master bedroom. Where there’s a master bedroom, there’s a master bath, and it follows there should be a can of hairspray.
One side of the sliding glass door was unlatched. I tiptoed through the bedroom and into the bathroom. Rather than grope for a light switch I flicked on the flash and shone it into the closet. A large silver can of hairspray sat at eye level. Perfect. I checked the nozzle for gunk. It was clean. Locked and loaded I returned to the balcony.
I crouched and didn’t breathe for half a minute. Nothing. In a semi-duckwalk I crossed a narrow widow’s walk leading from the balcony to a private sundeck. More architectural folly than practicality, it probably paid for Vann’s Mercedes.
Two thigh-high posts framed the entrance to a very private sundeck. If a person wanted to hide from the world this was the spot. An absurd sculptured stone bench faced out to the sea. I flashed the light on the deck. I turned and flicked it on the walkway behind me. Empty.
Nary a killer slipping up on me. I relaxed and smiled at my paranoia. The beam of the flashlight caused the sundeck tile to glisten. Was it as slippery as it looked? I glanced at Jaimie’s shoes on my feet. Was Raelyn wearing something similar? Perhaps it was death by stilettos?
Scuffmarks showed in a puddle of moisture near the railing. The print of a woman’s high heel and the flat of a larger shoe stood out from tread marks in the blown sand and dust. There was a tussle and Raelyn lost.
What brought her up here? I shined the beam around the entire floor. Marks, but nothing to indicate she was dragged out here. How did she know this spot existed?
Only a few people would have been aware of the cloistered sundeck. Kal needed to get the crime scene people up here before the rain obliterated the clues.
I backed up a few feet then spun and took giant steps along the walkway. I cut through the master bedroom, and high-tailed it down the interior staircase rather than face that jerk Vann Tassel again.
Kal stood on the platform where the band had only recently played happy chirpy music.
On tiptoes, I whispered in his ear. “I found indications of a struggle where Raelyn had to have gone over the railing. We need a crime scene team. Not the Magoo brothers!” The usual forensic team were first degree fumblers, notorious for messing up evidence.
“We don’t have time to waste,” I said. “A storm’s headed this way. Meet me on the balcony outside the master bedroom. No one except you—”
“And me,” Lizzy stood at my elbow.
I whispered to her. “Wait a few minutes before coming up. Where’s Chip?”
“He’s comforting Jaimie. They’re in his study waiting for Kal to question them.”
“And Fabio?”
“He’s in a controlled frenzy, knowing nothing and yet having to break the news to Sophia. He doesn’t want to do it over the phone,” Lizzy said. “He needs to hear from Kal.”
“We should be with Fabio when he tells Sophia. Raelyn wouldn’t have been here if not for us.”
Lizzy placed her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t go ther
e. If this wasn’t an accident, then the killer and only the killer is to blame.”
I looked around the room packed with whispering costumed partygoers.
Was one of them a killer?
Chapter 36
Kal snapped dozens of pictures of the scuffmarks without stepping onto the sundeck. “Good sleuthing, Olive.”
My fingers cramped around the can of hairspray.
“Can you and Lizzy wait here for the crime scene investigators? Keep everyone else away? Forget about the Magoos. These CSI are new. I should be at the medical examiner’s side when they take Raelyn away. After that I have to continue questioning the guests.”
“We’ll be right here.”
“One thing,” Lizzy tugged on Kal’s arm. “Fabio Santoro is waiting to talk with you. Can you please speak with him first? He was her friend.” The moonlight reflected tears pooled in her eyes.
Kal frowned. “I should have thought of that. Until the autopsy we won’t know if she died from the fall.” Turning slowly, almost unwillingly, he said, “Fabio will be a suspect since he knew her.” He pocketed the camera and walked away.
I watched Kal go down the outside staircase and said to Lizzy, “Part of our agreement with Sophia is our promise not to be involved in solving any more murders. Bringing Raelyn’s killer to justice is far more important than a cold cream endorsement. We can’t step away from this.”
Lizzy pointed to the spotlighted scene below. EMTs carried a covered stretcher around the side of the building. Kal and the medical examiner followed. A wave of murmurs emanated from the lower patios.
“I need a tissue,” she said. “Okay if I put on the lights in Jaimie’s bedroom?”
“Don’t put on the balcony lights. We don’t want curious snoopers coming up here.”
I looked over the scene below and tried to identify the revelers now turned mourners.
Half of the guests were strangers to me that I didn’t have a chance to meet, let alone have a reason to suspect.
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