Murder on the First Day of Christmas (Chloe Carstairs Mysteries) (4 page)

    
Robin, looking starlet-sexy in a black sequined Ungaro gown, chimed in. “Actually, if I remember correctly, I’m the one who came up with the theme. You wanted Christmas Nightmares like that movie.”

    
“I still think that would’ve worked.” Saul shook his head. “You people just don’t have my vision.”

    
“I would’ve liked to have seen you pull that one off, Amanda.” Oscar gave my mother an enthusiastic one-armed hug, almost spilling her champagne. She looked around for Dad to rescue her, but he was off foraging for lobster puffs.

    
“If anyone could, it would be Amanda,” Saul shouted, raising his glass. “To Amanda, a beautiful, talented decorator, and to Robin, my lovely idea girl. You always know just how to keep me in check, doncha baby.” He pulled the latter down, so he could give her a somewhat sloppy kiss on the cheek as we toasted.

    
“Why haven’t I made an honest woman of you, sweetheart?” he then asked in mock seriousness. “Oh, yeah. I want to live a long life!”

    
Robin’s face fell, but she quickly recovered and swatted at Saul with an “oh, you” wave of her hand.

    
I checked to see if she was saving up her outrage to lash out in private later, but she seemed more hurt than angry to me. The rest of us shifted a little uncomfortably, pretending Saul was more drunk than he was and, therefore, should be ignored.

    
The only person who seemed unperturbed was Saul’s assistant, Angela. I couldn’t tell whether my old classmate was just inured to Saul’s blustering, didn’t like Robin, or was merely lost in her own thoughts. Whatever it was, I could tell that her lipstick would have matched my dress perfectly and made a note to ask her what its name was before the end of the party.

    
“How ‘bout those interviews, huh?” Saul basked in his amped-up celebrity status, aware that people had been discussing the severed hand all evening, unable to drop the subject their host was only too happy to bring right back up for them. “Does the camera love me or what?”

    
“I can’t believe they still don’t know where that thing came from,” Robin interjected. “I mean fingerprints, DNA, something.”

    
“No fingerprints on record.” Saul shrugged. “I think the message was pretty clear, though.”

    
“Has anyone talked to Ellie Stone?” Nancy Browley, Oscar’s short, plump wife, eagerly changed the subject. “I meant to call her today.”

    
Mom seemed only too happy to leave the subject of the hand, even if it meant bringing up Judge Stone’s widow. “I went by to see her yesterday. The kids are still in town, so her family’s around her.”

    
“So sad,” Nancy said. “He was just in for a pacemaker - a routine procedure.”

    
“He got off easy if you ask me, dying in his sleep like that,” Oscar commented. “The man thought the four food groups were fried, smothered, buttered and Alfredo. We should all be so lucky.”

    
“Did I tell you people they got what’s-his-name for the movie version of
Slave For Love
. Not bad, huh?” Saul repeated a general announcement he had made earlier, having mentioned it twice already to us during the decorating of his house.

    
“That’s the Bonnie and Clyde one, right?” I figured what the hell. Throw the guy a bone. “About that couple in Georgia?”

    
“Yes, yes. One of my favorites. You know they never found that girl’s head. Most likely, some hunting dog will dig it up one day.”

    
Mom caught my eye. We knew just the dog for the job.

    
“So, is this a feature film? Independent? What?” Nancy couldn’t have sounded less interested. To hear Saul tell it, crime in the Southeast was only committed to provide his books with plot points and story lines. Some people got into it. Others didn’t.

    
“Made for television.”

    
“Oh.” Nancy’s well-timed sip of wine didn’t quite hide the upward turn of her lips.

    
“When is someone going to option your bestseller about the black widows, that’s what I want to know,” Oscar said. “That one was my favorite. Robin, you’re so pretty, I bet they would ask you to play yourself in it.”

    
Robin didn’t flinch. “There are far better actresses out there than I.”

    
Thick skin and good grammar. This girl was clearly no pushover.

    
Nancy again felt the need for a subject change. “Amanda’s doing our house next. I’m not going to tell you what she’s planning, so don’t ask. Just prepare to be dazzled.”

    
“Hate to break it to you, Nance, but after tonight’s little shindig, this town’s going to be partied out.” Saul beamed, knowing this was the second year in a row he had planned his holiday party right before the Browleys’ and it drove Nancy crazy.

    
She hid her annoyance with a litany of tiny gestures, running a soft white hand over her complicated blonde updo to check for stray hairs (none), touching the diamond pendant at her throat (straight) and flashing Saul a tight little smile (cold).

    
Saul remained oblivious. “You doing your Santa Claus bit?” he asked Oscar.

    
“You know it.”

    
A former prosecutor, now living it up in private practice, Oscar put his excess weight and love of pipe tobacco to good use by crashing his yearly party as Santa Claus, handing out trinkets to guests he thought had been good and wicked little “lumps of coal” to those who had been naughty. All in good fun, of course, but then, old habits die hard.

    
There was a bit of a commotion in the entry hall, causing a subtle change in the party’s happy tenor. A tall, powerfully built man, who I guessed was in his mid-fifties, drew our attention. Even from across the room, I could tell that his eyes were a rich topaz color that contrasted nicely with his dark skin and hair.

    
Oscar Browley glared at Saul, who responded with a poor imitation of a “What? What’d I do?” look. Oscar wasn’t buying Saul’s act and abruptly moved off into the crowd, headed for the game room. Nancy, in placatory mode, followed.

    
Without a word to us, Saul went to greet his new guest, and Robin followed him.

    
“Typical.” Angela’s eyes were hard and shrewd as she took in the scene at the door, then turned and headed toward the kitchen.

    
“Was it something we said?” I asked Mom, the rest of our little circle having deserted us.

    
“Wait till your Dad sees who just walked in.” Mom’s voice was grim.

    
“You know that guy?”

    
Before she could answer, though, in walked Bunny Beaumont, barely dressed in silver lamé and fox fur.  Since the crowd’s attention was already focused on the door, Bunny got her grand entrance, oblivious to the man who had entered before her.

    
“We can start this party now!” She threw her silver fur to squat, creepy little Gavin Beaumont, her husband-slash-gynecologist (I kid you not), who had entered after her. The videographer, who had been circling the party all night, made a great show of capturing the whole thing on tape, much to Bunny’s delight.

     “Let’s find Alex,” Mom said.

     Turns out Dad had been looking for us, too. We met in the butler’s pantry between the kitchen and the dining room.

    
“Guess who…”

    
“Did you see who…”

    
“Would somebody tell me who… Now, please.” I demanded.

    
Mom and Dad could communicate without completing their sentences, but my question still hadn’t been answered.

     “Tony Trianos,” Mom whispered.

     Ah…

CHAPTER 4

    
The grainy pictures on the front of the Birmingham News hadn’t done the man justice. Tony Trianos was the closest thing our town had to a gangster, just a man trying to run a legitimate business while staying ahead of all those pesky racketeering charges the DA kept trying to pin on him.

    
No wonder Oscar Browley, the former prosecutor, had been peeved. He had made Trianos a pet project, but could never make anything stick.

    
As a true-crime writer, Saul prided himself on having friends on both sides of the law. Browley was a great source, listed in the acknowledgements of several of Saul’s books. But Trianos, now there was a real get. The inside scoop on Trianos’s world must have been too tempting for Saul to resist, even if it did upset his good friend.

    
“Has Oscar seen him?” Dad asked.

    
“As soon as he walked in,” Mom confirmed. “Less than pleased.”

    
But the arrival of one shady character was just a momentary distraction, guests returning quickly to their crab cakes and champagne. I followed my mother to the bar. She ordered a flute of champagne for me, and a sparkling water for herself.

    
“It was the ring I bought myself when I sold my first manuscript,” Saul was enlightening a couple of aging debutants, both of whom had indulged in a lethal cocktail of Botox and bronzer for the evening.

    
“You mutha been so scared,” one of the desperate debbies lisped.

    
“Heard anything from Jacob?” Mom asked me.

    
Jacob West (cute architect, soccer player calves) was the reason I was decidedly single.

    
“No.”

    
“So, you’re seeing other people exclusively?” Mom sipped on her drink.

    
“Yet another negotiating tactic in the world of modern romance.” I shrugged.

    
“I don’t understand his fear of commitment.”

    
“He’s got baggage,” I repeated for the umpteenth time.

    
“There’s baggage and there’s baggage. This guy owns a Louis Vuitton matched set, from hatbox to steamer trunk. I say send him packing.”

    
“Why do we come to this thing every year?” I glanced around. “It isn’t as if you and Saul are big buddies. Or Dad and Saul. Or Saul and anybody for that matter.”

    
Mom’s look said she had identified my pathetic attempt to change the subject for what it was, but would take the hint. “I think it has something to do with the fact that what’s-his-name has been cast in
Slave For Love
.”

    
“Really? I hadn’t heard.”

    
Another hour of dancing and eating. The next time I spotted Mom, she was in conversation with Nancy Browley and the Beaumonts. Tony Trianos and Robin were having a cozy tete-a-tete nearby. Dad was across the room getting an earful from Oscar Browley, while another tall, good-looking man listened gravely.

    “Is your dad negotiating your dowry?” My friend Dana Wilson appeared beside me

    
“I should be so lucky.” I gave her a hug. “Where’s Dan?”

    
Dana’s fiancé labored as a construction foreman by day and played as singer in a band by night. The ten-year-old relationship was volatile, as in making you realize there are worse things than being single around the holidays.

    
She and I had lived in the same college dorm our freshman year, both enduring roommates from hell. Mine had turned her first taste of freedom into a sexual revolution, returned home and married her high school sweetheart before giving birth six months later to a nine-pound “preemie.”

    
Dana didn’t transfer to my room officially, but she had camped out there all the time. We amused ourselves by replacing her roommate’s chocolate Slim-Fast powder with an 1800 calorie plus weight gainer supplement, then sharing the poor girl’s dismay as she gained weight on a strict diet. Such experiences solidify a friendship.

    
Now my dorm room BFF was a serious young lawyer making a name for herself as a public defender. Dan, who had turned the feedback whine of bad equipment and poor acoustics into an anthem for teenage angst, was always one month away from signing a huge recording contract.

    
Dana was terrified he would never succeed in the music world (his tortured artist routine was wearing thin), but equally terrified that he would. Groupies were already a problem. What would happen when he had more than free drinks and the shorter lines of a backstage bathroom to offer them? One wondered. I was slated to be a bridesmaid in their January wedding.

    
“He’s got a gig tonight at two, so he needed a disco nap. Where did you get those?” She admired my chest.

    
“They came with the suit. So who’s Mr. Six Feet of Sex Appeal?” I nodded at the guy talking to my dad.