Buried Secrets Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mysteries, Book #14 (The Charlie Parker Mysteries) (3 page)

Felina’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“Well, an accountant, actually,” I said. “I’m a partner in the firm.”

“Hey, accounting is a solid profession,” Jerry said. “It’s how I got my start with the dealership. Dad was a consummate salesman but he wanted a family member handling the money.”

“These days, Jerry is the fabulous face of the entire business,” Felina said, sending adoration in waves toward her husband.

Jerry shrugged. “Fate. I just happen to look okay for the cameras. But I still read the balance sheets every single month.”

“I’ve admired your home my whole life,” I said to Felina. “We live over on San Feliz and I wandered the neighborhood all the time as a kid.”

“Amazing that we never knew each other,” Jerry piped up. “I guess I’m enough older that we wouldn’t have been in the same class.”

I had a hard time imagining the Brewster kids in public school, but he was probably right about the age difference too. He was closer to Drake’s age, I guessed.

 
“Let me show you around,” Felina offered.

I didn’t have to be asked twice. We broke away from the men and she led the way up the curved staircase. At the first landing, candles and greenery topped a small table. Above it, a round leaded window with about a million tiny pieces of glass depicted birds and flowers. It would be stunning during the day.

“The window is original to the house,” Felina said when she saw me staring at it.

We arrived at a wide hall, from which doors opened in three directions. All three doors led to one massive room with fourteen-foot ceilings. Four impeccably trimmed Christmas trees, each with a different theme—birds, flowers, snowflakes and glass beads—along with garlands on the chandeliers and massive potted poinsettias, filled the room with holiday cheer and probably made some nursery salesperson ecstatic the day Felina showed up. At the moment, the lights were dimmed and the lavish room felt lonely.

“We’ll have the New Year’s Eve party here in the salon,” she told me. “You and Draper must come. I’m afraid there will be enough food for a cruise ship full of people.” Felina laughed at her own joke, a high trill. “We’ll catch the third floor quickly and then go down to join the party.”

I followed her upward to the next level, not bothering to correct her on Drake’s name since she was already five stairs ahead of me. The elaborate wood paneling from the first two floors had given way to faux-finished walls. The traditional portraits that hung in the stairwells below were replaced here by modernism, paintings which seemed purchased to match the color scheme and not because anyone actually liked them.

Felina led me toward the door on the right, showing off a master suite that took up half the width of the house. It had probably originally been two or three rooms. She confirmed this when she told me they had knocked out a wall and combined the bedroom with the old study, and made a maid’s room into a closet. The closet was nearly as large as my living room.

“The children are in this wing,” Felina said, ushering me back to the hallway after I’d been sufficiently impressed by the master suite.

We headed down a corridor of ivory walls and burgundy carpeting, the kind that’s wide enough for there to be an occasional table or chair or potted plant, without danger of everyone tripping over them. She passed two or three doors before stopping to open one. The room was furnished for a young child, with a rocking chair in one corner and a youth bed made up in puffy blue linens. A young woman sat in the rocker with a blond-haired child on her lap.

“My baby, Adam,” Felina said with a little wave toward the pajama-clad boy.

I stepped forward to say hello but he buried his face in the bosom of the au pair. His slender arm had a tiny cast on it.

“Mrs. Brewster, he’s fussy and complaining about the arm. Is it time yet for more of his pain medication?”

Felina glanced at a diamond watch on her wrist. “Yes, Julia, that’s fine. Give it to him and put him to bed. He probably just needs sleep.”

Adam’s face was flushed and his blond curls seemed damp. He whimpered a little and buried his face against Julia’s neck.

“Poor little guy,” I said.

“He went down a couple of the stairs pretty hard. It was very frightening,” Felina said. “So scary what can happen to kids when you turn your back for a minute.”

Adam fussed again.

“Julia, it’s past his bedtime, isn’t it?” Felina gave a pointed look. “Soon. Please.”

“Yes, ma’am. We’ve almost finished our story.”

Felina continued to stare until the helper put down the book and started to rise. At the interruption to his story, Adam began to cry.

Felina put on a bright smile. “All right, darling. You may have the rest of your story. But then it’s time for beddy-bye.”

Julia settled back into the chair, picked up the book and settled Adam back into his comfortable position. Felina turned quickly and I trailed behind her with a quick “nice to meet you” aimed at the nanny and baby before Felina closed the door behind us.

She rearranged her skirt a little and started back down the corridor when one of the closed doors flew open. Out stepped a teen female dressed in black tights, a short, flouncy black skirt, and oversized black jacket that hung lower than the hem of the skirt. Her hair was cut in ragged lengths and colored in hunks of hot pink, black, and platinum blond and a tattoo of some mythical creature showed at her wrist.

“Katie. What are you doing?” Felina looked a bit distressed.

“Just going to check on Adam,” the girl said. She had a gentle voice that belied her intimidating ensemble.

“Julia’s with him,” Felina responded.

“I just want to say good night.” Katie raised her blue eyes to meet Felina’s dark ones. “Since you probably didn’t.”

“I just—” Felina caught herself and put her smile back on.

“That’s nice, dear. Be quick about it.” She started to turn away. “And get your rest.”

The energy in the hallway began to feel charged. I stepped out of the crosscurrent of electricity that flew between the two of them.

“I’m going downstairs to say goodnight to Daddy too,” Katie said.

Felina stepped into her path. “We have guests. I’ll send him up here.” She caught my eye.

“You two need a minute,” I said. “I’ll go look for Jerry, if you’d like.” Then I escaped to the ground floor.

From a vantage point two steps above the foyer I spotted Jerry Brewster. I walked up to him and after I’d passed along the message that Katie wanted to say goodnight, I edged into the gathering.

The living room was elegant on a far smaller scale than the salon upstairs. Only one Christmas tree here, this one all done in blues and greens, down to the wrapping papers on the gifts. Just as in a magazine. I’d never actually seen a real person take a decorating scheme that far. Looking around I noticed that even the area rugs and pillows on the all-white sofa followed the theme.

I scanned the room for Drake. He stood in a corner near one end of a buffet table, a glass in hand, a group of men standing around and laughing at something one of them had said.

Two women I remembered from a charity event at the country club last year chatted nearby. They glittered with jewelry and had that same perfectly turned out appearance as Felina. I was
so
in over my head here. A high-profile businessman who did his own TV spots was laughing with another man, the two of them holding heavy crystal glasses with a couple fingers of amber liquid in them. I thought the man owned a big appliance store, but I wasn’t sure.

To my left, just inside the door, a young man waited behind a bar. From the array of bottles and mixers, blender and glassware, it appeared he was ready for anything. I pointed to a wine bottle and he poured it into a delicate glass. I lifted it carefully, hoping like crazy that it wasn’t as fragile as it looked.

An older woman was standing next to me as I turned from the bar. She introduced herself as Lila Snyder and said the man beside her was her husband Claude. They lived next door, she added. The man informed me that he was retired from investment banking. Men, it seemed, needed to define themselves in terms of their careers while women usually discussed their homes or what books they liked. I followed that line of chit-chat with Mrs. Snyder until a young woman came around with a tray of canapés which caused the three of us to have our mouths full at once. I used the moment to drift toward a wall hanging of holiday-themed ribbons and bells.

Jerry had come back downstairs and was making the rounds with a pat on a shoulder here and a handshake there. I wandered to Drake’s side, wondering how long I had to handle cocktail party chit-chat before we could duck out. I didn’t want to jeopardize his business chances with the Brewster empire but I can only do so much of this stuff. I took small sips of my wine and smiled gamely.

About the time I’d coasted over to look at the buffet, Felina appeared at the wide doorway near me. Her dark eyes were narrowed, the color in her cheeks high. Had there been an argument after I left?

“Everything okay with the kids?” I asked.

A bright smile zipped to her lips. “Of course. Katie just—” She didn’t quite meet my gaze. “Typical stepdaughter, daddy’s girl.”

“Ah. That has to be tough. But then all girls her age are tough, right? I know I was.” Trying to find some common ground here. “Maybe you already know that. Do you have any other children?”

She gave me an odd little stare. “No. Only Adam.”

Someone called her name just then and Felina turned her dazzling smile toward a woman I recognized as the mayor’s wife. I smiled and edged away.

“Hey you,” a familiar voice said close to my right shoulder. “Your office party was nice, but I have to say that you need to upgrade your digs if you want to compete with this.”

“Linda!” We shared a quick hug, a ‘what’s new’ in which I mentioned our new assignment to locate Rosa Flores.

Linda Casper is one of my oldest friends, my personal physician, and a gal who has shared an adventure or two with me. She’s also pretty well connected in this city so it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that she snagged an invite to the Brewster’s party.

“So, how about this place?” I said. “My first time inside the house and it’s every bit as amazing as I thought it would be.”

“First time I’ve seen it decked out for a party,” she said. “It’s definitely something.”

“So, what . . . you’ve been invited before? A special guest?”

“Strictly professional. I’ve been the Brewster’s family physician for a long time. Over the years I’ve even made a few home visits.”

I told her about my brief tour with Felina. “Are the rest of the rooms sized for massive parties?”

Linda looked around. “Besides this room there’s a fairly normal sized dining room, a study where old man Brewster’s hunting trophies stare at you from all sides . . . And I suppose there has to be a kitchen somewhere. And then I was taken up to the master bedroom on the third floor. All very fancy, of course. I got the impression that Felina’s big project when she married Jerry was to completely redecorate the place.” She lowered her voice. “Maybe to erase traces of the first Mrs. B.”

We had moved toward a quiet corner of the room and settled into a pair of wing chairs. Laughter from other conversations flowed around us.

“That would be Katie’s mother? I met the girl upstairs.”

“Jerry and Kathie Jo came to me for years. Poor Katie. Losing her mom was really hard on her. Well, Jerry too. They were high school sweethearts. Cancer. Very aggressive. She was gone four months after diagnosis. Jerry and Katie both were in shock.”

“I can imagine.” Actually, I couldn’t imagine. If something happened to Drake— I found myself looking around the room for him.

“The poor man walked around like a tornado victim for a couple of years. I guess that’s about when he met Felina.”

“Well, she seems to be good for him,” I said. Jerry had rejoined the party and Felina stood with him, her arm linked through his, smiling up at him in the way of a good politician’s wife. Or a great businessman’s wife.

I spotted Drake weaving his way through the crowd.

“You haven’t been to the buffet yet?” he said, handing me a plate. “You ladies share this and I’ll bring more if you’d like.”

“Oh no, no, no,” Linda said raising her palm. “I’ve been to way too many parties this week and I have to stay away from that stuff.”

“You’re sure?” Drake pressed.

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Positive.”

“You seemed to have a group enchanted with something over there awhile ago,” I said to my hubby. “Things going well in the prospective-client department?”

“Yeah, I think so. Look, I’ll leave you gals to your chat. I’ll work the room a little more, and I’ll be ready to go whenever you say.” He straightened up and planted a little peck on my head.

“You don’t have to babysit me while I eat,” I told Linda. “I mean, maybe this is a social networking thing for you too.”

She shook her blond curls. “Nope. I’m good with just sitting here a minute. Besides, if I don’t keep an eye on you, I know you’ll be right over at the dessert end of that table.”

I had to laugh. She was absolutely right.