How to Crash a Killer Bash (6 page)

They still didn’t get it.

“No,” Melvin continued. “I mean Mary Lee Miller. She’s . . . been stabbed. I’m going to have to ask you not to leave the premises until one of my officers has taken your statements. They’ll escort you into the adjoining auditorium, where you’ll be sequestered until we can interview each of you.”

Chuckles turned to grumbles.

“What?”

“You’re kidding.”

“What’s going on?”

“We’ll get to you as quickly as we can,” he continued. “Please, just—”

The door to the crime scene room opened. All eyes left the detective and focused on the door. Corbin Cosetti staggered out, head down. In his hand, he held his mother’s yapping dog. Its pink-dyed fur was spattered with blood.

“Mother . . . ,” Corbin stammered, his face pulled back in a pained grimace. “She’s . . . dead. Someone murdered my mother.”

That’s when the serious screaming began.

While surprises can be great fun at a party, this wasn’t the kind I had in mind. The surprise was supposed to be the revelation of the “killer,” followed by the anticipated gasps of delight from the amateur sleuths. What now pounded against my eardrums were screams of terror.

Luckily my cast took direction well, even off script. Along with the San Francisco police officers, they helped herd the large, nearly hysterical group into the large auditorium to await their turn to be questioned. I cooled my heels while the cops began interviewing guests. The VIPs were released sooner than you could say “Where’s my lawyer?” while the rest talked on cell phones or to each other, anxious to be set free.

It was nearly an hour before I was called into a small classroom where Detective Melvin, ever the party pooper, waited for me.

“Ms. Parker, we meet again,” the detective said, after I’d been escorted into one of the museum’s educational classrooms. He sat behind a desk, his manicured hands folded, his silk tie perfectly aligned. While the room lacked the hot lights of a police station interrogation room, the Mayan murals depicting human sacrifices did nothing to put me at ease.

“So . . . you wanted to see me?” I said innocently, avoiding meeting the detective’s eyes. I fiddled with the buttons on my costume.

When I finally glanced up, he smiled. Sort of.

“Look, Detective Melvin. I don’t know what I can tell you. Everything was going fine until—” I broke off.

“Until your ‘victim’ became real.” He sat back in his chair, hands behind his head, and gestured for me to sit. I took the front-and-center chair and reluctantly sat down.

“So tell me what happened,” Melvin said.

“I have no idea. We were about to herd the guests into the mural room—the crime scene room—for the second act when suddenly Dee came out . . . her hands all bloody. I thought it was fake blood . . .” I shook my head. Poor Dee. What she must be going through now.

Melvin sat up and placed his hands flat on the desk. “Let’s back up a little. The rehearsal last night. I heard there was a confrontation between Ms. Jackson and Ms. Miller.”

I smushed my lips together before answering. Nearly everyone at the rehearsal had heard Dee’s idle threats. Who had blabbed? “Where did you hear that?”

He ignored my question. “What happened at the rehearsal?” He eyed me, as if he knew something I didn’t and was trying to trap me. But I knew Detective Melvin better than he thought, having “worked” with him on a previous case involving the death of one of my party guests. Although good at his job, he was quick to jump to conclusions. And he overcompensated—that was clear from his intricately embroidered wing tips. I knew from teaching abnormal psychology that this was a classic sign of narcissistic personality disorder.

“Sounds like you already know,” I said, crossing my arms.

“I want to hear it from you.”

I glanced at one of the murals on the wall. Four scantily clad men held down a bleeding victim on some kind of round altar. One of the men gripped a dagger in one hand and the victim’s heart in the other. I shuddered. Was Detective Melvin about to cut out my heart and have it with a little Chianti?

“Okay, sure, there was a little tension between Dee and Mary Lee at the rehearsal. That always happens during rehearsals. They’re stressful. But we worked it out.”

He flipped a page of his notebook and scanned the chicken scratch that was supposed to be his handwriting. “According to my
source
, Ms. Jackson actually threatened to kill Ms. Miller last night.” He read from his notes: “ ‘Bee-otch, I should have stabbed her when I had the chance.’ ” He glanced up, eyes narrowed on her. “Is that about right?”

I leaned forward. “She didn’t mean she would really have done it! It’s just something she said, you know, like we all do during times of stress. You know, like, ‘I’m going to kill that paper boy if he doesn’t stop throwing my newspaper in the sprinkler.’ ” I sat back in my chair, wondering who had felt the need to repeat Delicia’s meaningless threat.

Detective Melvin glanced back at his notes. “According to my
source
, Ms. Jackson picked up several weapons—a knife, gun, and rope, to be exact—and enacted Mary Lee’s virtual death behind her back.” He looked up at me for my reaction. He got what he wanted.

I sat openmouthed, unable to speak. My only thought was: Who was this so-called
source
? Was someone out to get Delicia?

“I assume from your silence that this is correct? Do you want to tell me why Ms. Jackson might have wanted Ms. Miller dead?”

“She didn’t!” I said and stood up to leave. This was getting Dee nowhere.

The detective pushed another button. “I understand your friend was having an affair with Corbin Cosetti, Mary Lee Miller’s son. And Miller wanted him to break it off.”

I glared down at him. “So? Delicia wouldn’t kill her for that. Ridiculous.”

“Not really. If she were to marry Miller’s son, she’d find herself among the city’s wealthy elite, wouldn’t she?”

I could feel the color rise in my face in fury. “Look, Detective. As a former abnormal psychology instructor, I don’t use this term loosely, but you’re nuts. Once again you’re jumping to conclusions, based on hearsay.”

“Actually, we have motive, opportunity, and means.” He ticked off his fingers as he listed his “evidence.” “Motive: Jackson had threatened to kill Miller for trying to end her relationship with Corbin. Opportunity: She was in the room alone with the victim—and all those weapons. Means: When we find the real weapon, no doubt hidden somewhere in that room, I’m pretty sure it will have her bloody fingerprints all over it. Not exactly hearsay.”

I thought for a moment. The Styrofoam copy of the dagger obviously couldn’t have killed Mary Lee. It wasn’t strong enough or sharp enough.

“So you don’t have a weapon?”

“Not yet. But we’ll find it. With all the security, no one can get in or out of the museum without something like that being discovered. Like I said, it’s most likely in that room. My officers are searching for it now.”

I felt another wave of heat rise up from my toes. This wasn’t happening. My friend and coworker was not a murderer. But if I’d written this as a play, even an amateur sleuth would convict her on this damning evidence.

“How do you know she was alone in there? All of my actors entered the room at some point to place their weapons. Any one of them could have done it.”

I stopped abruptly. What was I saying! That Raj or Berkeley could have murdered Mary Lee Miller? Not a chance. That left one of the museum staff, or even Corbin . . .

“The room is only accessible from two points,” the detective said. “From the front, where the guests were to enter. And from a side door where the suspects supposedly made their covert entrances.”

“Yes, that’s right,” I said. “Once Delicia entered—she was supposed to be the last suspect to drop off her weapon—she was to discover the dead body and then scream to alert the guests, cueing the second act. But”—I was thinking out loud here, visualizing the possible scene—“when she discovered Mary Lee had really been stabbed . . . she must have freaked out . . . and screamed for real.”

“That doesn’t explain why that side door was locked. Which it was, according to the security guard.”

That stopped me for a second. While Detective Melvin drummed his fingers on the desk, I tried to come up with an explanation.

“Inside or outside?”

The detective stopped drumming and frowned.

“Was it locked from the inside or the outside?”

“Inside.”

Uh-oh. That would make it look like Dee locked it after she entered.

Detective Melvin waited.

“Look,” I said, leaning in. I felt like a passionate prosecutor trying to convince a skeptical jury. “Anyone could have locked that door after Dee entered—to make it look like she was the last person in there. They could have reached in and locked it without her knowing. And that means anyone could have come in there and stabbed Mary Lee—
before
Dee even went in there.”

Detective Melvin blinked. I could see the wheels turning and thought I had him. Then he said, “But the killer stabbed her with something sharp, then replaced the weapon with the Styrofoam knife. Delicia Jackson was the last one in that room. And her hands were covered in blood.”

After Detective Melvin dismissed me, I found Brad just leaving the crime scene room. He’d just ducked under the yellow police tape in the entryway that the police had used to cordon off the area.

I ran up to him. “Brad!”

“Not now, Presley,” he said abruptly, brushing past me.

I backed up, taken by surprise at his change in mood. What the hell was up with him?

I raised my hands in a gesture of surrender. “Okay. Could you at least get me in there to see Delicia? I’m sure she’s upset and needs a friend.”

Brad glanced back at the police officer standing guard, hands folded across his crotch. He stepped over, said something to the cop, then returned. “He’ll let you in to see her. But don’t do anything—”

“Stupid,” I said, finishing his sentence. “That’s what you were going to say, right?” I glared at him.

“Not now, Presley,” he said, and took off across the vast, empty room.

I looked at the officer, wondering briefly what a crime scene cleaner could say to an officer that would get me inside. Heading over, I smiled sweetly at him, then ducked under the tape before he could change his mind.

Delicia sat in a folding chair, near where a small table had been brought in. She was shaking her head and mumbling to herself as I approached her. She jerked her head up the moment she saw me. I expected her to stand up and hug me. Instead, she stiffened and returned her gaze to the table.

Something was seriously wrong.

“Delicia, are you all right?” I pulled out another folding chair next to her, sat down, and put my hand on her shoulder.

She shook it off. “What do you think is wrong?” she snapped and pulled off her titian wig.

This was not the Delicia I knew and loved.

“It’s going to be okay, Dee. They’ll find out who did this and—”

Her head whipped around to face me, her tearstained face filled with hurt and rage. “Don’t you get it? They think I did it! I was in that room with her, alone. And I have her blood on me.”

“That’s just circumstantial—”

She cut me off. “They know about my relationship with Corbin.”

“That doesn’t mean you—”

“And
someone
conveniently overheard me say I wanted to kill her and told the cops!”

I had a feeling the word “someone” was meant for me.

“No, Dee. I didn’t tell Detective Melvin that. I didn’t tell him anything that would incriminate you. I know you didn’t do it.”