How to Host a Killer Party (7 page)

I sat down on a large rock to adjust one of my blades. As I got up, Duncan spotted me and urgently waved me over. No doubt he’d found something interesting in one of his hidden caches he wanted to share with me. Curious about his latest treasure discovery, I headed over.

“Hey, Dunk. Thanks again for playing the part of the vampire at that kids’ party. You were a hit—”

I stopped short when I realized Duncan wasn’t listening to me. Grimacing, he had knelt down at the water’s edge and was pointing in the water. His prized Nikes were soaked. But instead of the expected cache, he seemed to be staring at what looked like a large black-and-white fish bobbing on the water’s surface.

“What’s up, Dunk?” I asked, following his gaze to the water.

Whoa. A dolphin? In the bay? “Oh, the poor thing . . .”

Duncan stood up, suddenly looking pale instead of his usual red-headed complexion. He shook his head robotically.

“What . . . ?” I stepped closer and leaned in.

Oh. My. God. This was no fish. Not wearing a sequined black gown.

It was a floundering Ikea Takeda.

Looking down at the bobbing body, the swirling water, and the rocking waves, I felt the blood leave my head. To keep from falling down, I sat down hard on some rocks, no doubt bruising my butt. The world spun around me like a whirlpool. I tucked my head between my legs.

“Oh my God,” I whispered to my skates. Then I gagged and drooled a little on them.

When I could lift my head, I glanced over at Duncan and wiped the spittle off my lips and chin. He remained rooted to his spot, gawking at the floating woman, his mouth hanging open like a dead fish. Before I could suggest he look away, he bent over and hurled into the cache he’d been setting up.

To keep myself from joining him, I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and punched in 911 with trembling fingers. When the dispatcher came on the line, I rambled incoherently, “I want to report . . . a body . . . a drowning. . . .”

“May I have your name please?”

“Ikea Takeda . . . I mean, Presley Parker,” I stammered.

“Where are you now?”

I glanced around. “Avenue of the Palms, at Ninth . . . on Treasure Island.”

I answered the rest of the dispatcher’s questions as best I could. She told me to stay put, officers were on their way, to remain on the line, and some other things I didn’t really hear.

I said, “Okay . . . okay . . . okay . . .” Then, without thinking, I hung up.

Duncan’s normally ruddy complexion was now the color of the bay waters. “You all right?” I asked.

He spat and straightened up, jostling a string of saliva that hung from his scraggly goatee. Glancing back at the body, he said the F word, then added, “Think she was a jumper?”

“Huh?” I said.

Duncan nodded toward the looming Bay Bridge. Although not as popular as the Golden Gate Bridge for suicides, the Bay Bridge also served the purpose. Caltrans had put up barriers to try to stop the jumpers, but it hadn’t done much good. I’d read once that about twenty-five people jumped from the Golden Gate every year.

But Ikea—a suicide? I supposed anything was possible, but she really hadn’t seemed suicidal last night. Shocked. Angry. Humiliated, maybe. I might have diagnosed her as paranoid. But not despondent. Could she have fallen overboard from the ferry on her way back to the city last night?

I shivered. “We’ll know soon enough. The police are on their way.” Unable to help myself, I glanced at the body in the water. “Poor Ikea.”

“The mayor’s chick?”

I nodded. “She was the guest of honor at the event I hosted last night.”

“Whoa. Sucks for you. But I heard she’s a real b—”

Sirens cut off the rest of his words. I spotted a black-and-white coming from the two-man satellite police department located in a corner of the former Exposition Building One, and another black-and-white headed down the winding exit from the Bay Bridge. A third siren seemed to be coming from my pocket. My cell phone.

I could just make out the “Happy Birthday to You” tune. My mother’s personalized ring. I hesitated, then answered it in case it was a real emergency.

“Hi, Mom. What’s up?”

“Presley?”

I stuck a finger in my uncovered ear and strained to hear her over the incoming sirens. “Yes, Mom, it’s me,” I shouted. “Now’s not a good time to talk. Can I call you later?”

“Sweetie, you know I’d only call if it was important.”

“Okay, what do you need?”

“I need help. . . .”

“With what? Are you sick? Are you hurt?”

“No, I was watching one of those infomercials on Channel 58 and they showed this new miracle stuff, it’s like medicine, and it makes all your wrinkles just disappear without surgery, and you only have to make three easy payments, but you can only get it by dialing a special phone number, and I could only remember a couple of the numbers, three and seven, I think, so could you call for me and order some? I think Blue Cross will cover it. You know I’m going to need it for the mayor’s wedding—Sweetie, what’s that horrible noise? It sounds like—”

“Mom, I’m going to have to call you back, okay?”

“Okay, sweetie. I think there’s someone at the door. The bell’s ringing, or maybe it’s the phone—” The line went dead.

Poor Mom. When I told her I was taking on the mayor’s wedding, she assumed she’d be invited. In her day, she had not only held the best parties; she’d also been invited to them. In between, she’d also managed to raise a substantial amount of money for the arts, lead roundtable discussion groups, help build a stray animal shelter, and even host her own local TV show. Not to mention marry five husbands.

Now Alzheimer’s was stealing away the person she
is,
the person she would have been, but not who she
was
. Veronica Parker Valdez Uawithya Jefferson Heller still thought of herself as the Princess of Pacific Heights. I’d make it a point to stop by sometime today—if no more bodies turned up.

I slipped my phone back into my pocket as the two police cars pulled up on the street near the water’s edge. Duncan vigorously waved the officers over as if signaling a distressed ship at sea. The two local officers—Tony Cerletti and Amberly Finarelli—were well-known and well liked around the island. Amberly, tan, no makeup, her hair pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail, carried so much bulky equipment around her uniformed waist, she tended to walk like a penguin with her arms sticking out. On her feet she wore regulation black SWAT combat boots, more for the look than the necessity, I imagined.

Tony also wore the regulation uniform and shoes, but carried his gun, flashlight, radio, pepper spray, baton, and cuffs as if they were part of his physical makeup. He looked as comfortable in his duty gear as Amberly looked uncomfortable. Amazingly, they made a good team.

An officer from the other black-and-white stepped out wearing a suit, which fit his muscular form perfectly.
Men in Black
-style sunglasses, black high-gloss oxfords, and slicked-back black hair finished the look. This guy cared about his appearance. When he pulled off the dark glasses, his eyes were surprisingly blue.

The flash of his badge distracted me from his eyes.

“I’m Detective Luke Melvin, and this is Officer Carole Price,” he said, gesturing toward the uniformed officer who had exited the shotgun side.

Melvin. I knew that name.

Uh-oh. The detective I was scheduled to meet at the station.

Detective Melvin replaced his badge with a small notebook. “Who found the body?” he said, glancing back and forth between Duncan and me.

“Uh . . . I guess I found her . . . but I thought it was some kind of fish or something. . . .” Duncan shot a look at me and jerked his thumb in my direction. “Presley thought it was a dolphin. Then she recognized the body.”

“Presley?” The detective frowned. His black eyebrows accentuated his pale blue eyes. This guy was way too good-looking to be a cop. He should have been a male model. He probably knew it.

“Presley Parker?”

Pulling myself from the eye candy, I nodded.

He cocked his jaw and stared at me as if he’d just identified the Zodiac Killer. Flipping a page in his notebook, he scanned it, then looked up at me again with those nearly transparent blue eyes. “We have an appointment this morning. Regarding the death of Andrea Sax.” He pronounced it An-DRA-ya, instead of AN-dree-ya.

I pulled out my cell and glanced at the time. “Yeah. Guess we’re both going to be a little late.”

Not even cracking a grin, he said, “What are you doing out here?”

“I thought I’d get in a little exercise before our meeting, so I skated around the path, and then I saw Duncan—”

Before I could ramble on like my mother, another police car pulled up, and two crime scene techs jumped out. I could tell because they wore dark blue jumpsuits with the letters SFCSI stitched on the fronts and backs, and carried metal suitcases like on TV.

“Officer Price will take your statement,” Detective Melvin said, indicating his partner before stepping over to greet the new arrivals. I nodded, unable to escape the nagging notion that I might be in real trouble now that I was connected—albeit randomly—to two dead bodies in less than two days.

Detective Melvin nodded to his partner, and the younger officer took my statement. As soon as we were finished, she reported back to the detective. He nodded a couple of times, whispered something to her I couldn’t make out, then turned to me.

“My office, one hour,” he called out. Then he climbed into his car and drove off, Officer Price riding shotgun. My legs wobbly, I managed to skate back to my condo, my brain racing faster than my rubbery legs. I couldn’t get that image of a floating Ikea out of my head. Nor the idea that I was connected to both victims.

I showered robotically, grabbed the cleanest clothes I had—black jeans and an “Irritable Bowel Syndrome—The DaVinci Colon” T-shirt I had made up for a murder mystery party/fund-raiser. I slipped on a pair of fuzzy black socks and my favorite black Mary Janes, and topped my outfit with a black leather jacket. Grabbing my knockoff purse, I was headed for the door before I remembered to feed my three cats, Cairo, Fatman, and Thursby.

Ingrates. They didn’t even bother to look up from their various spots on my garage sale furnishings as I filled the bowls with dry cat food. No doubt they were holding out for seagull tapas and rodent al dente. All three had been strays I’d found on the island when I moved in. Fatman was fat and white, Cairo was an orange scaredy-cat, and Thursby was my black killer attack cat that mostly attacked my feet. At the moment he was asleep in my half-closed underwear drawer, his nose tucked into a Victoria’s Secret bra cup.

I knew if I didn’t watch out, I’d turn into one of those cat ladies who falls and can’t get up, undiscovered for days, ears chewed off by hungry felines—

The theme song from
The Twilight Zone
rang out from my cell phone, ending my death-by-cats vision. I checked the number. Blocked.

“Hello?” I said, multitasking as I glanced at the kitschy cat clock with the big rolling eyes and wagging tail on the wall. Time to go. Didn’t want to be late for my interrogation. I wondered whether I should pack a bag or call an attorney.

“Hello?” I said again when there was no response.

I heard a click, then froze as I listened to the voice repeat the same phrase in the earpiece: “I’m going to kill the bride. . . . I’m going to kill the bride. . . . I’m going to kill the bride. . . .”

The phone clicked off, leaving a dial tone buzzing in my ear.

I stared at my cell phone in disbelief.

The voice on the other end of the line had been my own.