The Azalea Assault (17 page)

“Brownies! They’re in the passenger seat.”

“Conveniently in reach of the driver’s seat?”

He ignored her teasing, probably because her tone was a bit cold after his Nick comments. “I’ll come back down for them.”

As Cam and Rob struggled to get the cart up the steps, Cam cursed herself for not accepting Joseph’s offer of help, but it was all done in five minutes, and there were no mishaps.

S
he and Hannah got the food loaded into the warming trays, and then Cam went back downstairs to go over details of the evening with Evangeline. Evangeline had written an agenda because the evening seemed so filled with potential land mines. As they were going over the schedule, Annie entered the lower-level door dripping from the rain. She looked at Cam apologetically.

“The others have gone to the guesthouse—we’re done with all but the people shots, but…”

“Oh dear, come here.”

Evangeline took pity on Annie and rushed over, wrapped a large beach towel around her, and then pulled her up the stairs, suggesting a hot shower. She urged Cam to follow. “Let’s find her something dry to wear,” she said.

“I need my equipment, too,” Annie said as Evangeline pushed her toward the bathroom.

“Oh, honey, you don’t need to go back out there. I’ll send Giselle over with a covered cart. She gets to go home soon, anyway, so she won’t mind.”

“You’re a lifesaver.”

Cam wasn’t sure what the statuesque Evangeline would have to fit Annie, who was at least seven inches shorter. She gave Evangeline a few hints at Annie’s style, then headed back to greet guests, hoping Evangeline and Annie could work it out. As she stood and waited, she decided to call Jake with her theory about Ian as Jean-Jacques’s murderer.

“That’s pretty far-fetched, Cam,” he responded once she’d finished giving all the details.

“Maybe, but Ian and Jean-Jacques argued from the first time they ever set eyes on each other, according to their claims. Why would that be?”

“They’re lying about knowing each other. But Ian and Annie argued, too. They might also know each other and Annie’s lying about it.”

“Annie wouldn’t lie to me like that.”

Jake paused, having trouble being patient. “I’m just saying, by your definition it sounds like Annie and Ian actually have a connection, too, even though they haven’t met before. If you believe that, I mean.”

“And what connection could they have? He’s got her confused with another girl.” She ignored the information about Paul, hoping she could will it not to be true.

“This is a murder investigation. I can’t tell you that. Ask Annie if you’re so curious. You leave the investigation to the professionals, though, okay?”

Cam fumed. She hated being patronized more than anything, but a close second was being told what to do. The two together made her blood boil. She hung up on Jake with a growl.

“Sounds bad. What happened?”

Evangeline had just come out of the kitchen with a bottle of wine and a tray of evenly filled glasses. She held up the tray in offering, and Cam nodded gratefully. She took one of the glasses and followed Evangeline down the hall.

“I’ve got some ideas about the murder and Jake won’t
listen, but I can’t know if they mean anything unless… look, can I ask you some questions? I mean… I don’t want to offend you…”

Evangeline set the tray on a table in the entryway and helped herself to a glass of wine, too.

“Peach. Should go well with the barbeque,” she said. After she’d taken a sip, she looked at Cam again. “Fire away. My life is mostly an open book anyway.”

“They’re trying to pin this murder on Nick.”

“Nick? You mean Jack? Your brother-in-law?” She looked and sounded disgusted, which was encouraging.

“I noticed that.”

“Okay, that’s a good starting place. Why do you call him Jack?”

“Because when I knew him, we were all Jack.” She sighed heavily and sat on a bench, sipping her wine again. “It was me being too clever, I suppose. I am Evangeline Jacqueline. Jean-Jacques was Jonathan Jacobs, and Nick was Jonathan Nicholas. We had ‘Jack’ in common. It was brilliant marketing, especially with the eye patches—we might have made it if we were just a little better.”

“So that
was
you in the punk band?”

Evangeline took a large drink and went on. “I grew up in pageants—every step watched, every word recorded—always proper. I went to an Ivy League college, still watched, and even more paranoid, as it was a lot more blue bloods, so I worried I didn’t quite fit in. Daddy was new money and not a ton of it at that. When I finished college, I went a little nuts—dye job, alias, an old friend who knew how to live rough…”

“Old friend?”

“Jack the first—Jean-Jacques—or Johnnie, as I knew him. My parents lived around the corner from Samantha, and he and his sister used to stay summers with her. I think Samantha hoped I’d be a good influence, but instead he was the bad one.”

“So you knew him for… years? Did you tell the police?”

“Of course I did.”

“And then what about Nick?”

“Fluke, really. We were still up north. Johnnie and I wanted to start a band. I sang, he played drums. We needed a guitarist. We searched clubs in Jersey listening for what we wanted. We heard Nick at a club, outclassing his bandmates by a long shot, and invited him to join us. He was ready for a change of scene, so he did.”

Giselle came through with the cart. “Where to with this, ma’am?” A tarp had clearly been removed from the equipment, but Giselle still dripped on the sandstone.

Cam reluctantly rose to help move Annie’s equipment. It was part of her job. “I’ll help you get it up on the landing where Annie has access to all of it,” she said. “Evangeline, I’ll be right back, okay?”

U
nfortunately, she was still moving things when guests began to arrive, and Cam and Evangeline took it in shifts to lead them upstairs. Rob had done his best talking to Joseph, as he could tell Cam and Evangeline were busy, but with the influx of guests he couldn’t keep it up. To say Joseph was no help with the crowd was an understatement, so after a handful of people had arrived, Cam joined Rob in the drawing room to help get the guests situated.

A
nnie came down from the third floor, stunning in a royal blue dress of Evangeline’s that was probably very short on their hostess, but came to midthigh on Annie and looked fabulous. Annie’s blue eyes popped more than normal, which was saying something.

“You look pretty hot,” Cam said, ignoring Annie’s glare. “I hate to suggest this, when you’ve worked for forty-eight hours straight, but this might be the best time to get people shots. Your stuff is all on the landing.”

“Ack! All of it? Can you help me put some of it where
nobody will be tempted to play with it? Happy, though, to shoot these people. Photographing them is definitely preferable to talking to them,” Annie mumbled. “Besides,” she said more loudly, “I am all over anything that makes tomorrow less work.”

Cam helped her stow the extra supplies in the den below, which was not being used. It was true Annie looked much more at home with a camera in her hand, and Cam breathed a sigh of relief as the party began in earnest. Everyone seemed to be having fun—everyone other than Ian, anyway.

I
an’s expression was more sour than ever when he arrived with Hannah and Tom.

“Smile,” Annie said, shooting their picture, then letting out a quiet cackle that only Cam heard.

Cam raised an eyebrow at Annie, but humor was a better way to handle this than some of the other options Annie had probably considered, so she left it alone after that.

They only socialized briefly before Cam and Evangeline encouraged everyone to fill their plates. They had bibs for everyone, so some laughter ensued about bibs complementing semiformal clothing. Annie caught a lot of laughter on film, which had been the primary goal when Cam and Evangeline had debated the messy, traditional Southern options.

It was all going better than Cam had expected up until shouting called everyone’s attention to one corner of the room.

Tom and Hannah looked posed for a photo, leaning together, faces touching, but their expressions were frozen in clownish horror. Their smiles stuck, as if trying to call the moment back. Ian had stood and encroached on Annie’s
space—something Annie didn’t tolerate from bullies, so she held her flash up and began a slow strobe in Ian’s face.

“Back off!” Her voice was low but unmistakable.

“Geez! Will you stop it?”

“Not until you back off! I am just doing my job, and I don’t need you in my face!”

“You don’t need shots of these two.”

“The magazine may not. But maybe Cam does to publicize this lovely event.” She smiled her most saccharine smile. Cam cringed.

“You’re a psychopath—a woman who bashes in windshields with crowbars, and I’m convinced you killed Jean-Jacques because he rejected you! You thought it was time to up the ante!”

Cam had made her way over, but Jane Duffy beat her to it; her low growl didn’t carry, but it still had the authority of a mama bear.

“You go cool off! If you can’t be professional, I’ll have you sent home first thing tomorrow!”

Ian yanked an elbow out of her reach and left via the balcony, instantly blown about in the storm. Joseph, who was closest to the door, stood flustered as the curtain flapped in the wind, then finally reached out to slide the door closed. Ian had not taken his eyes from Annie as he stomped out and toward the stairs that led to the garden. Annie turned back toward the crowd, trying unsuccessfully to blend as she snapped a few more pictures. She worked her way to Cam.

“Is your laptop here? My memory card is full,” she said after looking closely at her camera.

“Sure.”

Cam led Annie downstairs to the study where they’d stowed her spare equipment earlier. Annie sat to download pictures. Cam thought Annie probably had backup memory cards and that would have been faster, but she suspected this was also an effort on Annie’s part to get people to forget the scene.

Cam returned to the party, wanting to check in with Mr. Patrick, but she couldn’t find him.

“Neil went to get some bourbon. He thought it might set everybody back at ease,” Samantha said.

“Where’s Evangeline?”

“Tumblers. She said something about tumblers.” Samantha winked this time, a conspiratorial gesture, so Cam smiled back.

She supposed a little extra oblivion couldn’t hurt, but after five minutes she wasn’t the only one who had begun to wonder what the delay was. On the upside, by the time Annie returned, people had all but forgotten the row that had set all this in motion, though Cam still let out a breath when Evangeline finally reentered the room.

“Nowhere! Isn’t Neil back?” Evangeline’s hair was mussed, and Cam thought she might have dug through every cupboard in her kitchen looking for the tumblers.

Cam shook her head, but Evangeline spotted something else.

“There!” She stooped in front of a side table and pulled out a crystal tumbler. “Samantha, would you like to pull out enough of these for everyone, or go check on Neil? It shouldn’t take this long. The bourbon he likes best is on a top shelf, and I’m worried he may have fallen.”

“Evangeline, I can get Mr. Patrick,” Cam offered.

“Don’t be silly, honey. This house has a maze for a basement,” Samantha said, “but I know right where he is.” She ducked out.

“You can help me wash these out, Cam. They’re pretty dusty—haven’t served bourbon for twenty in quite some time.” She laughed as she stood to look for a tray to put the glasses on.

They passed Mr. Patrick without seeing Samantha as they took the tray to wash glasses, and then all had a great laugh when finally guests, bourbon, and tumblers finally converged in the same room. Everybody toasted “to bourbon worth the wait.”

Annie, Cam noted, had caught much of this on film and was glad something positive had come from her spat with Ian.

When everyone finished eating, Samantha brought in the brownies. People began to rave about them the moment they took their first bites. The night seemed to be salvaged, and was punctuated by the arrival of a spectacular lightning show for ten whole minutes before Cam heard retching behind her.

“Great,” she mumbled. She turned and saw Barney, the terrier, choking, before he projectile vomited on the corner of a Persian rug.

“Evangeline! I don’t know how it happened, but it looks like Barney got hold of a brownie!”

Evangeline leaped from a love seat where she’d been talking to Madeline Leclerc, rushed over, and then shouted for a servant to clean up the mess. She picked up Barney carefully.

“What happened, big fella? You get something that make your tum tum…” Cam imagined a lot of people spoke baby talk to their pets, but that didn’t make it any easier to listen to.

“I’m going to be sick!” Before Cam could clear her mind of the impression that this announcement resulted from the baby talk to the pooch, Joseph rushed toward the balcony, handkerchief to his mouth.

Cam nearly cricked her neck as she caught Joseph sprinting outside, only to be pummeled with rain. Mr. Patrick looked at Joseph’s plate in concern. Joseph had left only crumbs of his brownie.

“I think the brownies have been poisoned!” Mr. Patrick shouted. People around him began to gasp, staring at their dessert plates.

“Nonsense, Neil. I feel fine, and I’ve eaten one,” Samantha said. Cam thought maybe she’d actually had two or three, but that wasn’t her business, and it didn’t make the point any less valid. If anything, it made Samantha more right.

“Maybe only some of them were poisoned!” he persisted.

Cam couldn’t hold in an annoyed sigh before turning toward
Annie, who looked stunned. Annoyed sigh or not, worry knotted Cam’s belly. She knew the implications of such an accusation, even one that had no merit. She stepped forward.

“That doesn’t even make any sense. I helped bake these. They’re fine,” Cam said to deaf ears.

“He’s going into convulsions!” Evangeline shrieked. At first Cam thought she meant Joseph, but Joseph must have still been outside. Then she saw the dog.