How to Host a Killer Party (32 page)

“Duncan!” I yelled.

Duncan leaned out of his squatter’s office, his red hair falling in his face. “Dude.
What
?”

“You ready?”

“Du-
uhh
.” He flashed a freckled thumbs-up.

Duh. I wish I had that kind of relaxed confidence. “All right. Meet you at the Officers’ Club.”

After my coworkers had piled into their cars and started off, I checked one last time for Brad’s SUV in the lot. Where the hell was our crime scene cleaner? Mentally shrugging, I followed the caravan to the starting point less than a mile away.

A few minutes later we’d pulled up to the club parking lot and had begun unloading for the game. I sidled up to Duncan, who was unboxing a couple dozen GPS units and absently setting them on a card table. His real attention seemed to be focused on Delicia. I caught him stealing glances at her as she covered another table with a tablecloth. She’d chosen camo fabric in an effort to coordinate with the theme. I wondered if she noticed Duncan’s surreptitious looks.

Meanwhile, Berk began videotaping the area, with close-ups on the GPS units, the stack of clues, and my frantic-looking face. Raj just strolled around, hands clasped behind his back, watching for guests—invited and uninvited.

“Think the game is easy enough for beginners?” I asked Duncan, then chewed my nail nervously.

“Totally. With these new units, all they have to do is find the longitude and latitude for each coordinate.” He picked up a unit as if it were a valuable relic. “These are state of the art. They have their own maps, built-in electronic compasses, even voice navigation.”

“So the players don’t need to know all that technical mumbo jumbo you’re always spewing?”

He rolled his eyes. “No. You just enter the waypoint written on the clue. That’s where the geocache—the
treasure—
is hidden. That’s it.”

“Hmmm. Can I track a player with one of these units?”

He looked at me like I was an idiot. “God, Presley! The units don’t broadcast your
location
—unless you’re an
alien
or something. I thought you knew all this stuff. The satellites use radio frequencies that broadcast
their
position. Your unit takes that information to figure out where
you
are. It’s called
triangulation
.”

“So they don’t have to wear foil helmets to deflect all those gamma rays?” I asked, laughing.

He rolled his eyes again. If he wasn’t careful, his eyes were going disappear into his head forever. That’s what my mother had always told me.

“You know, someday they’re going to be able to track Oldtimer’s patients with these babies,” Duncan said, practically petting the one in his hand.

I bristled at the euphemistic word. “It’s Alzheimer’s.”

“Whatever.”

I started to pick up a unit but fumbled it in my fingers. It landed on the table with a smack.

“Careful! Those are
expensive
.” Duncan grabbed it up.

“Sorry. How much do they cost?”

“Some are only a hundred bucks, but those are crap. These cost five hundred a pop.”

Whoa. I wondered who paid for them. Did Duncan make that kind of cash hosting his GPS hunts?

“What are you guys talking about?” Delicia appeared with a handful of leftover fabric she’d used as tablecloths. In addition to the camo, the tables now sported green, black, and brown balloons, along with signs that read CLUE #1. Ever the scene stealer, she was wearing camo overalls and Crocs that matched the tablecloths. Cute.

“I was just telling Dunk that I didn’t realize these GPS units were so expensive.”

She picked one up. Duncan eyed her. “That’s a Cobra,” he said, suddenly losing the attitude.

She turned it around in her hand. “So how do you play with it?”

Duncan smiled as he gently took the unit from her hands. “You use it to find a hidden cache. When you find it, you TSLS—take something and leave something. Then you write a note in the logbook.”

Delicia scrunched up her nose. “You take something? Isn’t that stealing?”

He laughed a little too loudly. “It’s
trading
, not stealing.”

“Cool. What kind of stuff is usually in the catch?”

“It’s a
cache
, like C-A-S-H, not a
catch,”
he explained patiently. If I’d said it, he would have rolled his eyes at me again. What kind of a spell did Delicia have on him?

“Could be anything in there,” he continued. I’d never seen him so animated as he was with Dee. “Stuff like Star Wars figures, baseball cards, army men, foreign coins, cool stuff like that.”

I thought about the earring.

“No jewelry? Or chocolate?” Delicia joked.

Duncan laughed again. I hadn’t even known Duncan had a sense of humor, and here he was giggling like a teenager—which he practically was.

That was all the time I could spare thinking about a possible Duncan/Delicia hookup. It was time for the hunt to begin, and none of the invited players had arrived yet. I paced the area, checking the time on my cell phone every thirty seconds, wondering where everybody was.

Moments later a white SUV pulled into the parking lot of the Officers’ Club. Out stepped Brad, dressed in his crime scene jumpsuit. Had he been working?

“About time,” I said, checking his uniform for signs of blood.

“Sorry I’m late. Had a job. How’s it going?” he said, glancing around.

I looked at my coworkers, who were standing idly by, and shrugged.

Brad’s eyes moved to the table filled with the GPS equipment. He stepped around me, picked up a unit, and examined it. “A Magellan? Nice model,” he said to Duncan. “Parole officers are starting to use them to keep track of ex-cons. What channel do you use?”

Duncan lit up. “Channel two as the primary for both FRS and PMR, and twelve as the alternate FRS channel,” he said in some foreign tongue. He may as well have been speaking Fo’Shizzle.

“Ah, so they’re longer-distance walkie-talkies, like Nextels or Talkabouts.”

Apparently Brad knew about global positioning satellite units. And ex-cons.

What didn’t he know?

I glanced around for the umpteenth time. Where was everyone else?

 

What if you gave a party and nobody came?

Did they not get the invitations?

Or had the mayor circumvented the invitation and cancelled the party . . . ?

What had I been thinking? Hell, some event planner I was. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this entrepreneurial business after all. I shook my head at my office mates, who’d been waiting for my cue. The fog had come in and the darkness was swallowing up the creative decorations. Slowly we folded up the tables, popped the balloons, gathered up the clues, packed up the GPS units, and loaded everything into our various vehicles.

Delicia gave me a hug. “The mayor is a jerk,” she said, trying to cheer me up. I sighed, which Berk caught on videotape. While Brad helped the others with their tasks, I caught him glancing at me several times.

An hour after the party was supposed to begin, I was already back at my new office, replacing party props on shelves. My tired coworkers had gone home, after trying to pump up my self-esteem. Even Brad had disappeared, apparently called to another crime scene. Only Raj remained to lock up the building after I left.

Before leaving my office, I checked my messages and listened to an “urgent” phone call from my mother. Turned out she wanted to know if she’d left her panty hose at Tommy’s Joynt. I didn’t even want to know how that might have been possible, and I deleted the message. Tomorrow I’d stop by to see her again. Every day I didn’t visit her, I lost another small part of her.

The other “urgent” call could wait until morning—the one from Detective Melvin. I pretty much knew what he wanted.

Me.

In an orange, county jail jumpsuit.

Not my color.

Remembering the videotape in my purse, I gathered my notes and headed for the door. “Have a good night, Ms. Presley,” Raj said, peering out of his office.

“Thanks, Raj. And thanks for your help tonight.”

“It was my pleasure, actually. Drive yourself safely.”

As I backed out of the parking lot, I also remembered the earring I had buried at the last cache, hoping to catch a killer. Damn. In my haste to clean up and clear out, I’d forgotten to retrieve it. I made a sudden left turn onto Avenue B, followed it to Perimeter Road, then pulled over at the rocky edge, not far from where Ikea’s body had been found.

The fog seemed thicker in the darkness, making it even harder to see. A few lights glowed through the mist from the Bay Bridge, but the island had few streetlights. We’d had to set up our own lights for the hunt, but of course, now they were gone.

I used my cell phone to light the way, creeping along the rocky shore while half feeling my way to the cache spot. Running my fingers into a crack in the rocks, I felt the treasure box and pulled it out. As I opened it, I half expected the earring to be gone, thinking maybe the killer had somehow figured out my plan and beat me to the punch.

There it was, mocking me and my stupid idea.

I tucked it in my pocket and returned to my car. Locking the doors, I switched on the headlights and checked the mirror before pulling out.

I thought I heard the sound of an engine just before I turned the ignition, but I couldn’t make out where it was coming from. Checking my mirrors again, I scanned the road, but saw nothing. I was about to pull out when the crash came.

I thought I’d been jolted by an earthquake.

Then I realized I’d been hit!

The crash sent my MINI sailing into the deep ditch on the side of the road, dangerously close to the precipice that led to the bay. I bumped my head on the wheel—I hadn’t bothered with my seat belt for the short drive—and hit my knee on the dash. That was going to bruise.

With my head throbbing, I sat there gripping the wheel, my body wet with perspiration, my heart racing wildly, my leg aching.

Once I’d calmed myself down and took stock, I looked out the windshield, hoping to catch a glimpse of the monster that had deliberately sent my car careening off the road. But all I could make out in the foggy, semidarkness before it disappeared was the receding back of something big and white.

An SUV?

My hands shook as I pulled my cell phone from my purse, causing me to bobble the phone to the floor. Damn! I needed to put a string on that thing. Searching for it in the dark, I found it underneath the brake pedal and grabbed it up. I held it as steadily as I could and tapped what I hoped was Raj’s number. The ache in my leg went into overdrive as I waited for him to answer.

Finally, a male voice said, “Hello?”

“Raj, this is Presley! I need your—”

“I’m sorry, this is Richard’s Craft Store. I think you have the wrong num—”

Shit. I clicked off before the man finished talking and punched the number above it, my fingers trembling even more. The phone rang forever before being picked up.

“Yes, Raj Reddy here—”

“Raj! Thank God! I’m—”

Raj’s voice interrupted me. “I’m out of the office at this time, but if you leave me a message, I will be calling you back. Thank you very much and have a very nice day.”

Double shit!

I dialed 911.

“Nine-one-one. Hold please.”

Hold?

I hung up.

What the hell was I going to say anyway?
I think someone’s trying to kill me?
I couldn’t prove it, even with my car in a ditch. I had no ID on the driver, other than the car was big and white. Maybe.

I tried Delicia, then Berk, then Brad. Where the hell were all these people? At some party I wasn’t invited to?

As my pulse slowed and my shaking eased, I realized Raj would call back. Eventually. In the meantime, the menacing SUV seemed to have disappeared. I had to get my MINI Cooper moving in case it returned for a second swipe.

I spun my wheels in the dirt for several minutes, then gave up in frustration. The car was going nowhere. I got out, putting my weight on my sore leg, and immediately tore my shin on a sharp outcropping of rock. The gash burned with pain, the ache in my leg kicked up another notch, and the throbbing in my head returned with a vengeance.

I locked the car and set out for home on foot, using my cell phone to light my way between frantic redials. The walk would take less than fifteen minutes, and I knew some short-cuts that would keep me off the main road where I was more likely to be a target. But my leg injuries wouldn’t make it easy. Still, it was better than sitting in the car. Alone. In the dark.