How to Dine on Killer Wine: A Party-Planning Mystery (10 page)

I touched on the iPhone light and held it up. A small shard of glass stuck out from the center of the red dot. I pulled out the shard, wincing like a baby stuck by a diaper pin, and pushed my bleeding finger into my mouth.

Outside, I heard the screams of sirens.

“Fire! Fire!”

My mother appeared at her bedroom door and rushed into the hallway, sans robe but still wearing her silk nightgown, thank God, and her green beauty mask.

“Calm down, Mother. It’s just the police.”

Just the police? What was I saying?

Clearly disoriented, she scanned the area. “No fire?”

“No, Mom. You’re safe. Everything’s okay.”

Except for the dead body in the garden.

“What’s happening? Why are the police here?”

I walked Mother back to her room and reassured her as I helped her remove her makeup mask and get dressed. Brad would handle the cops. Right now, my mother needed me.

“There’s been an incident,” I said, buttoning her floral blouse.

Mom’s eyes narrowed. I could tell she had become her old self again. “Oh no. Presley. Not another dead body.”

“Mother!”

“Well, you do have a penchant for finding a body or
two after one of your big parties. Who is it this time? Not Larry, I hope.”

I almost laughed at her matter-of-fact response to the incident—and the thought that it might have been her paramour. I filled her in as she applied her makeup, correctly this time, and answered her questions as best I could. Of course, at the moment, I had questions too, and not many answers.

“Are you sure you want to go outside?” I asked her. “The police are there and—”

“Oh yes. If you’re involved in this—and no doubt you are—I want to be there to help. I am your mother, after all.”

I nodded helplessly. I knew there was no stopping her. Perhaps my tenacity was genetic. I had a feeling I might need it with this latest development.

“Presley,” Mother said, suddenly staring at my fresh white Killer Parties T-shirt. “You’re bleeding.”

I looked down. Sure enough, a streak of blood ran diagonally across the bold red letters of my self-promoting T-shirt. I checked my middle fingertip. It had begun to bleed again.

“Oh, that. I must have brushed my finger against my shirt while I was helping you dress. Hope I didn’t get any blood on you.”

Mother’s frown deepened. “Where did the blood come from?”

“I cut my finger on a piece of glass. Long story. Honestly, I’m fine. Let’s go on outside. I’d like to see what’s happening.” I stuck my finger in my mouth again to try to stop the bleeding.

“Don’t do that, Presley. It’s not ladylike, and very
unsanitary. You need a Band-Aid.” She dumped out her Coach bag onto the unmade bed and sifted through a colossal collection of what she called emergency items—traveling makeup, mini-flashlight, address book, mirror, scarf, tissues, medications, chocolate, crossword puzzle book, hand sanitizer, toothbrush, nail file, sunglasses, coupons, mints, nail polish, herbal tea, a picture of me at my first big event—Mayor Davin Green’s surprise wedding party—and her medic-alert ID information tag noting her Alzheimer’s condition, which she refused to wear. Somehow in the vast pile of stuff, she located a Band-Aid, ripped off the paper, and pressed the thing around my middle finger.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said, feeling myself revert back to childhood. I was surprised she didn’t just kiss it and give me a cookie. “Now let’s go.”

I led the way down the hall, shooting a quick glance at the Killer Parties corkscrew inside the broken frame along the way, then outside to the garden area, where we’d held the party. Two cop cars were parked in the driveway, and four uniformed officers were scattered around, talking with Brad, Rob, and Marie. An ambulance with paramedics pulled up moments later and checked the body, then stood back, making no attempt at resuscitation. Finally, a police van drove up and four crime scene techs got out and went to work, taking pictures, investigating the scene, collecting samples, and whatever else they did on
CSI
-type shows.

Mother headed over to comfort Marie, who was still sitting on the bench, looking pale and drawn, while Rob, standing next to her, talked to one of the officers.
Mom had a knack for comforting people, so I left her to it. I made my way over to Brad, who was talking with a beefy, red-faced man in a dark suit that had stopped fitting the man several pounds ago.

He paused as I approached. “Ma’am, could you wait over there until I’m finished here?”

Ma’am?

Brad intervened before I snapped the man’s head off and stepped on it like an overinflated balloon. “Presley, this is Detective Kelly. Ken, this is Presley Parker, the party planner I told you about. She’s the one who put the event together. You’re going to want to talk to her. She may have seen the vic last night, snooping around the premises.”

Was that true? Had I possibly seen JoAnne Douglas sneaking around the Purple Grape in the dark?

The detective squinted at me, as if looking at a disturbing X-ray. I realized he wasn’t looking at my eyes; he was staring at my chest. Men.

“Ma’am, is that blood?”

I glanced down. Oh, it wasn’t my boobs that had attracted his attention. It was the streak of blood on my shirt. I tried to brush the stain off, then gave up and held up my bandaged middle finger.

“Uh, I caught a piece of glass in my finger—,” I said, hoping he didn’t think I was flipping him off. Which I might have been.

Detective Kelly turned over a page in his notebook and wrote something down. Probably something like, “Presley Parker: murderer. Evidence: blood on shirt.”

“When was this?” he asked.

“Uh, just a few minutes ago, actually. I was—”

“I’m going to need your shirt, ma’am” he said, cutting me off again.

“Seriously?” I said, stunned at his request. “Wait a minute. You don’t think—”

“I don’t think anything, ma’am. Just doing my job.”

Again with the interruptions and the “ma’ams.” I really wanted to hold up my bandaged middle finger again.

“Well, I assure you, I had nothing to do with the death of that woman—JoAnne Douglas. I only met her once. But if you’ll listen for a moment, I might know where the murder weapon came from.”

The detective looked up from his notebook in anticipation.

“I’ve been trying to tell you—that’s how I cut my finger. When I went down the hall last night, I heard a crunching sound under my shoe. I forgot about it until this morning, when I saw the corkscrew in JoAnne Douglas’s chest. So I went back to the hall and started checking Rob’s collection of corkscrews. That’s when I noticed that the glass covering one of them was gone, and an antique corkscrew was missing. I think the killer took it and replaced it with one of mine.”

“Why didn’t you tell us, Pres?” Brad said, frowning at me like an irate father.

The detective didn’t give me a chance to respond. He asked, “You say you cut your finger on a piece of glass? Did you break the glass, ma’am?”

“Good heavens, no!” I nearly screeched in defense. I took a deep breath to calm myself. “No. I was feeling around on the floor and that’s when I got stabbed with a shard of glass.” To Brad I said, “I was on my way to
tell you when my mom came out of her room in a panic, after hearing all the sirens. She thought the house was on fire.”

My explanation didn’t relax Brad’s frown. Meanwhile the detective made a note in his little book that was probably not flattering. Before I could explain myself better, a thirtysomething woman in a white coat holding a clipboard approached the detective. Her dark hair was twisted into a spiky knot, her brown eyes were outlined in kohl eyeliner, and one of her eyebrows was pierced. The name tag on her coat read, “Dr. Overholt, Napa County Coroner.”

“You got something, PattyJo?” Detective Kelly asked her.

“Not much, not until I get her back to the lab. From her temp, lividity, and lack of rigor, I’m guessing time of death was somewhere between six p.m. and midnight.”

“What?” I said. “Are you saying she could have been lying under that table during the entire party?”

“Was the party held between six and midnight?”

“Seven and midnight,” I said.

“Then, yes,” Dr. Overholt said.

Oh my God. JoAnne Douglas’s dead body could have been there the whole time—and no one noticed, thanks to the long white tablecloth.

“What about the weapon?” Detective Kelly asked.

“It’s an odd wound. It looks as if she was stabbed with the corkscrew—which wouldn’t be easy to do—but after seeing that handle on the thing, I suppose anyone could have gripped it well enough to shove it into the middle of her chest. She also had a head injury,
but that may have happened in a fall. I’ll know more when I examine her.”

What was JoAnne doing at the party, uninvited? Was she hiding under the table? With a can of green paint? Was she planning to sabotage the party like she’d promised the night before? Who had killed her? And why had he—or she—used one of Rob’s antique corkscrews instead of one of my Killer Party corkscrews lying right there on the table?

Detective Kelly closed his notebook and looked at me. “Ma’am, don’t leave town. I’m going to want you to come down to the station later and give a statement. And I’m going to need your shirt.”

The tip of my finger suddenly began to throb. This was shaping up to be a royal pain in the…finger.

“I don’t like that guy,” I said to Brad, after Detective Kelly turned his metaphoric magnifying glass away from me and back to the crime scene. At the moment he was peering at the murder weapon, which was still poking out of the dead woman’s chest.

“Like he said, he’s just doing his job, Pres. You should know that by now.”

“Yeah? Well, where’s Detective Melvin when I need him? At least he knows I’m not a murderer. That Kelly guy actually acts as if I’m a suspect. ‘Don’t leave town’? Where’d he learn that? Those
Police Academy
movies?”

“Hey, it wasn’t too long ago that even Luke thought you might be involved in a murder case. There must be
something about you that screams ‘I did it!’” Grinning, he gave me a squeeze.

“Very funny. It’s not my fault that parties are often emotionally charged events. People drink. People flirt. People do things they wouldn’t normally do. Besides, nobody died at the Nerf Challenge Party I hosted last weekend. And there were even weapons there.”

“That’s because the party was for eleven-year-old boys and the weapons were made of foam rubber. This place is riddled with potential weapons.” He swept an arm around the half-cleaned-up party site, indicating numerous corkscrews, cheese knives, empty wine bottles, broken wineglasses, and blunt instruments.

He was right. If a person wanted to kill someone, just about anything would work as a murder weapon. As for suspects, no one present appeared particularly upset about the death of JoAnne Douglas, other than Marie Christopher. The news seemed to have sucked all the energy from her body. Meanwhile, Allison acted as if a dead body in the garden was no big thing. Amazing how two sisters could be so different.

I looked for Rob, wondering how he was coping, and spotted him talking again with Detective Kelly. When the detective asked him a question, Rob frowned and gestured toward the body. I wondered how well the cop and Rob knew each other, living in the same county. If JoAnne Douglas had been a longtime thorn in his grapevine, perhaps he’d had encounters with Detective Kelly before.

Speaking of grapevines, news had apparently spread through the local grapevine like a glassy-eyed sharpshooter—or
was it glassy-winged? A small crowd had collected on the periphery of the property. The Madeiras and Briens, the neighbors who had attended the party last night, had arrived via their golf carts, apparently having been alerted by the police sirens. Tourists and rubberneckers were also stopped at the edge of the yellow police line to gawk and speculate. I quickly sent Raj to turn them away from the property, but in spite of my efforts to control the situation, one driver wormed his way through the growing crowd: Kyle Bennett. Talk about your classic ambulance chaser.

Kyle got out of his silver BMW. Dressed in a dark, expensive Armani suit, he looked as if he were about to enter the courtroom. I wondered how he’d heard the news so quickly—police scanner? He approached Rob, patted him on the back as if in support, and spoke to the detective. The detective responded, and Rob stepped away and disappeared into the house. I sidled up near Detective Kelly and Kyle Bennett to listen in. No doubt the flashy attorney had hopes of sharing the limelight—or perhaps taking on a new client.

“Did you see anything suspicious at the party last night, Kyle?” the detective asked.

“No, nothing, Ken. It was a very nice event. Hard to believe the poor lady was lying dead under that table while we were—”

“We don’t know that yet,” Detective Kelly interrupted. “Were you here all evening?”