How to Host a Killer Party (34 page)

I didn’t move, just sat frozen to the spot, holding my swollen, throbbing ankle. She tossed the bag at me, and I jumped. The pain in my leg increased exponentially.

Chloe picked up the flashlight and shifted the beam to the bag that now rested in my lap.

I looked down and grimaced.

Chocolates.

“Go on. Eat one. They’re good for you. Full of antioxidants. Helps prevent cancer. And chocolate gives you a natural high, you know. Makes you feel good. I think it has the same stuff that’s in Prozac. Serotonin or Valium or something.”

I stared at her. She spoke so sweetly; I think that’s what scared me the most. This was not your average sociopath.

“Chloe, why?”

“I’ll tell you what,” she said, sounding condescending. “While you eat, I’ll explain everything, okay?” She waved the flashlight, gesturing for me to get started. “That’s what you want, right? That’s what you’ve been trying so hard to find out, isn’t it?”

I nodded. I figured I’d pretend to eat the chocolates while listening to her brag about her accomplishments and her superior intelligence—classic behavior for a sociopath. Meanwhile I’d stall as long as I could.

She waved the gun at me, this time more menacingly.

I pulled a chocolate from the bag.

“Good girl.” Chloe sat back in the chair, the flashlight in one hand, the gun in the other, both resting on her thighs, but pointed in my direction. In spite of the outfit, she still gave the appearance of the perfect administrative assistant. Expensive outfit, right down to the shoes, and not a hair out of place. Maybe once she started her story, she’d forget about the chocolates. Obviously they were tainted.

I held the first chocolate aloft, as if about to pop into my mouth, and said, “You’re a lot smarter than I thought, Chloe. I didn’t suspect you at all. I still don’t understand though. Why did you murder Ikea—and Andi? And try to kill Rocco? And me?”

Chloe laughed. “Oh, you had it all wrong, right from the start. Everyone thinks the administrative assistant is just a drone, with no brain of her own. Meanwhile our party planner here thinks she’s Nancy Drew.”

“I never thought you were a drone,” I said. “That’s why I’m surprised you committed the murders. Were you in on Ikea’s scheme to blackmail people who had an interest in Treasure Island? Or did you just find out about it and want a piece of the action?”

Instead of responding, Chloe nudged the air with her gun. It clearly meant
Eat up
. I put the chocolate in my mouth and held it between my teeth, trying not to touch it with my tongue. Fear had dried up most of my saliva, which would slow down the melting process. If only she’d look away, I could spit it out—

“Good girl. Yummy, isn’t it?” Her voice was filled with sarcasm. She began fiddling with her necklace as she talked. “So anyway, you’re half right. Ikea and I did have a good thing going—manipulating people who wanted something from the mayor. Ikea and I always talked about how we were going to be rich when we got out of college. We were sorority sisters at Berkeley. Tri Delts. So when the job at the mayor’s office opened up, I knew it would be a door to something big and lucrative.”

“So you were in on it together,” I managed to say around the lump of chocolate in my teeth.

“Yeah, but I was the brains behind it all. I introduced Ikea to Davin. He was just coming off a bad relationship, and I knew he’d fall for her. Who wouldn’t? It wasn’t long before she had him wrapped around her ring finger, if you know what I mean. I started giving her inside information about the special interest groups who wanted to influence the mayor, and she used it to our advantage. The money just poured in.” She paused, seemingly lost in a memory.

“Then what went wrong?” I said, trying to keep her talking as long as possible. The words came out more like, “Den wa wen wong?”

In the dim light, I could see her face darken, the lines around her mouth and eyes deepen. I stuck my tongue into my cheek and pretended to chew, then nodded for her to continue. At this point I couldn’t talk or she’d know I wasn’t eating the chocolate.

“He proposed,” she said simply.

I nodded as if I sympathized with her.

She played with her necklace as tears glistened in her eyes. She sniffed, then said, “Oh, she was so thrilled. Neither of us expected the relationship to last. But I didn’t expect her to accept his proposal either. She certainly wasn’t in love with him. In fact, she had a few other men on the side.”

I thought of Dakota as she paused, tears brimming her eyes again. Instantly I knew why—it was right out of my psych textbooks.

“You were in love with Davin Green, weren’t you, Chloe?” I could barely get the words out without dribbling chocolate down my shirt.

The gun in her hand snapped to attention. I was onto something.

“And if she married him, that would change things, right?” I prompted her, then wiped the chocolate saliva off my bottom lip.
Just keep her talking
, I said to myself, hoping she didn’t notice the chocolate pouring from my mouth with each word.

Chloe gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, Ikea decided she liked the idea of being the First Lady of San Francisco. She had her own personal plans for Treasure Island and knew she could talk Davin into doing what she wanted. Forget about those other groups. After scamming them out of all that money, there was nothing they could do. They certainly couldn’t tell the mayor they’d been bribing her to influence him.” As Chloe spoke, her voice grew raspy, her words biting.

Wow. As a psych teacher, how could I have missed this other side of her?

I squirmed, trying to get my leg comfortable on the floor, but moving my ankle sent a jolt of pain to my brain. The chocolate was really beginning to melt now. I had an overpowering urge to swallow the liquid that had gathered in my mouth. Another drizzle made its way down the side of my mouth and dripped onto my shirt. I hoped Chloe didn’t notice.

“Aak!”

Chloe suddenly jumped up from the chair. She swung the flashlight down at the floor in front of her, and with her gun hand, pulled up one of her pant legs.

Three bloody lines ran down her ankle.

Thursby, my attack cat, had apparently found a new scratching post.

“Stupid cat!” she hissed, rubbing at the scratches. She tried to shoo him off with the gun but he just sat there, wondering, I’m sure, what all the fuss was about. “I really hate cats,” she said.

While she was temporarily distracted, I took the moment to spit the remaining mouthful of chocolate into my hand and slipped the melted glob into my pants pocket.

When she looked back up, I chewed on my tongue, wondering how long I could stall until the next dose.

As if reading my mind, she shined the flashlight in my face. “I think it’s time for another chocolate.” She pointed the gun at my head.

My heart skipped a few beats.

“Swallow it, Presley. You’re taking too long. You wouldn’t want anything to happen to your kitty, would you? Maybe he’d like a chocolate.” She looked down at Thursby. “Kitty wanna chocolate?”

Thursby didn’t move, but Fatman appeared and started for the sweet in her hand. Fatman never refused a meal. At his size, one bite of that chocolate and he’d be dead in seconds.

I pretended to swallow. “Okay, okay, don’t hurt my cats.”

“Good girl,” Chloe said, smiling. “Have another.”

I fumbled with the bag, eventually pulling out another chocolate. Before I popped it in my mouth, I asked, “How would their marriage really change anything? The two of you could still go on taking bribes and making money.”

Chloe sighed. “Isn’t it obvious? She wouldn’t need me anymore. What’s his would be hers—and he had plenty, believe me. I’d be out of the picture, with no more money coming in, other than that lousy paycheck. I can’t live on that.”

I had to keep her talking, keep her distracted, buy time until I had a chance to figure out how I was going to get out of this.

“So why did you have to kill her? Couldn’t you just blackmail her?” I glanced around my familiar little living room, searching for something, anything, to clobber her with. A lamp. A cat bowl. The video camera.

There was nothing within reach.

“She had . . . stuff . . . on me,” she said slowly.

I knew my time was short. “But you helped with the wedding plans. Why would you do that if you didn’t want her to marry Davin?”

“Because,” she said, “we used to talk about our dream weddings, back in the sorority house. She’d always wanted a big society wedding at a huge mansion with all the important people there. A surprise wedding would have pulled the red carpet right out from under her. And that’s exactly why I suggested it to the mayor.”

She waved the gun at me again, indicating it was chocolate time. Using my clean hand, I palmed the next chocolate while pretending to pop it into my mouth.

Chloe leveled the gun at my forehead. “Oh, come on, girl. You’re not much of a magician. Put the chocolate in your mouth and then open up and show me.”

I should have practiced my prestidigitation skills a little more when I was a kid, but I could never make a rabbit come out of a hat, let alone do a card trick. Reluctantly, I obeyed.

After verifying the chocolate was in my mouth, she lowered the gun and nodded. “Good girl.”

Trying not to swallow the saliva that was puddling in my mouth, I asked again, working my tongue around the mouthful, “Did you really have to kill her? She was your friend.”

Chloe frowned. “I know it sounds harsh, but after all I’d done for her—introducing her to the mayor and helping her get all that money—she was turning her back on me. I was about to lose my best friend
and
my bonus income. These shoes don’t come cheap, you know.” She aimed the flashlight at her black suede Eccos. Perfect for working out at the gym or murdering a victim in her condo.

“Besides, she threatened to have me fired! Like I said, she’d been collecting evidence against me all along—insurance, she called it—while destroying anything incriminating about herself. Couldn’t have that now, could I?” Sarcasm rolled off her tongue like liquid chocolate.

I thought about the sex videotape she’d made of Ikea and Duncan. That piece of evidence had slipped through the cracks, so to speak.

“So you poisoned Ikea at the wedding,” I managed to say around the viscous mass oozing in my mouth. In spite of my efforts, it was melting fast. I wondered just how much poison I was actually absorbing.

And how much it would take.

“Yeah,” she said, a smile curving her lips. “It was so easy, thanks to a little help from this young punk I hired.”

“You hired someone?” It sounded more like “Ooo ired um un?” with the chocolate goo in my mouth.

She nodded, grinning at her own cleverness. “Kid named Geoff Pike. Calls himself the G’Man. Ironic, since he’s a criminal, not a crime solver. When one of the island cops arrested him for breaking and entering and car theft, I checked him out. Paid him a visit at the city jail and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. I told him I’d get him released in exchange for some ‘assistance.’ It was a simple matter of forging the paperwork.”

I guess it pays, in more ways than one, to work at the mayor’s office
, I thought, fighting down the urge to swallow.

“Once he got out, he had no choice but to do what I asked. He knew I could send him right back again. I set him up in one of the apartments on the island for convenience, got him an SUV and a cell phone, and just called him whenever I needed something. He was very accommodating.”

“So he did all your dirty work,” I managed to say, dribbling a little chocolate spit down the front of my shirt.

She shrugged, like it was no big thing.

I figured the more I talked, the more I’d dribble, so I kept going, starting with the break-in we’d had at the office building. “He’s the one who stole the chocolate birds from Rocco’s supply the night before the party.”

Chloe blinked, confirming my guess.

“And injected the poison?”

“Oh no,” she said, shaking her head. “He was too stupid to do that. The guy was a real rookie. After he got the chocolates, I injected the poison. Learned how from the Internet. Then all I had to do was smuggle them onto Alcatraz for the wedding—piece of cake, so to speak. Then I just waited for the opportunity to use them. When I saw Ikea on the dock, heading for the ferry, I knew I had my chance. I joined her, gave her a little hug, a few sympathetic words, and some chocolates to make her feel better.”

“And after she ate them and started to get sick, you shoved her into the water,” I said. I choked on the collection of slime in my mouth.

My cell phone suddenly rang. Chloe spotted my purse on the couch, grabbed it, and dumped out the contents, including my phone. As she glanced at the caller ID, I spit out the mass that had been the second chocolate and hid more of the sticky glob in my pants pocket, praying it wouldn’t show. At some point the moist chocolate would leak through, but for now I could keep it covered with my chocolate-covered T-shirt. When Chloe looked up, I had my tongue firmly stuck in my cheek again.

“Nobody important,” she said, tossing the phone aside. “Time for you to swallow that.”

Nobody important? Except maybe Raj. Or even Brad. Now no one would ever know the trouble I was in. I pretended to do as she asked, praying I wasn’t ingesting much of the poison while wondering if I’d be dead in a few minutes. Feeling dizzy, I rolled my eyes and swayed. Chloe watched me intently. I forced myself to focus—I had to keep her talking. She gestured with the gun again.

I brought the third chocolate to my mouth, then stopped, hoping to stall with another question. “What about Ikea’s earring? How did it end up in the cache? Did you do that—or did you get your thug do that for you too?”

Chloe pointed the gun at my mouth. I popped in the chocolate.