Authors: Sheryl J. Anderson
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Amateur Sleuth
Killer Cocktail (2 page)
“In its place, I now say ‘junior high.’”
“He’s in the middle of a case,” I attempted, not sure which of us I was defending more.
“You need to get out of town,” Tricia pronounced. “Remind him what he’s missing.”
Cassady pursed her lips doubtfully. “What guarantee do we have that she won’t wind up missing him?”
“None, but the Hamptons are known for their ability to distract. That’s why we’re going to Southampton. This weekend.”
I winced. Weekend getaways had contributed heavily to my current state of romantic frustration, so it wasn’t a favorite concept at the moment.
Kyle and I met in October. Things had lurched along reasonably well until right before Christmas, when he’d taken me to the precinct holiday party. Kyle was their most eligible bachelor, which meant I was under intense scrutiny by all the wives and girlfriends present. While I’d been spared an interrogation, I had managed to wear, say, and do the wrong thing all in one evening, a feat even for me. My dress had been too low, too short, and too black. I’d trashed the weepy tearjerker they’d all just finished loving in their book club. But my crowning achievement had been to slip on the plastic snow scattered cheerily around the dance floor and spill my eggnog on the commissioner on the way down.
Kyle wasn’t bothered by any of it; the eggnog incident actually amused him. But I expected Santa to drop a scarlet A down my chimney and let me guess what it stood for. I was so sure I didn’t fit into his world, maybe it was becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. He’d had to work on New Year’s Eve, so I’d extended my vacation in Virginia. In January, he’d caught a really heavy case and we’d only seen each other twice, so I boldly invited him to my place for dinner
on Valentine’s Day. He accepted and it was wonderful. In March, we’d gone to a charity dinner Cassady’s group was cosponsoring and Kyle had been charming to everyone, though his impatience with the politics of the evening had been apparent to me.
on Valentine’s Day. He accepted and it was wonderful. In March, we’d gone to a charity dinner Cassady’s group was cosponsoring and Kyle had been charming to everyone, though his impatience with the politics of the evening had been apparent to me.
After that, we’d finally seemed to gain some momentum as a couple. That’s why ten days ago, I’d suggested we go somewhere for a weekend, just the two of us. He hadn’t said anything for a long time and then had said, “We’ll see.” I could hear the squeal of brakes and feel the whiplash. Since then, we’d had a couple of vaguely unsatisfying phone calls. Clearly, I’d made him uncomfortable. How uncomfortable was the question.
But perhaps it was a question best pondered somewhere out of town in the company of my two best friends. I tried to remember the balance on my credit card. “It’s the first week of May. When does the season start?”
“Doesn’t matter. We’re going to my aunt’s house.”
Cassady and I exchanged a look, confirming that we were troubled by the same thought. “Aunt Cynthia?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Aunt Cynthia of the ever-fluctuating last will and testament?” Cassady asked.
“The same.”
“The Aunt Cynthia who got drunk at your grandfather’s funeral and stood on the dining room table and sang ‘We’ll Meet Again,’” I continued, just to make sure that we were all, in fact, talking about a woman we had heard Tricia vow she would never speak to again unless under court order.
“That’s her.”
Cassady and I wavered, uncertain of the etiquette involved in saying the next thing. I took the plunge. “But you hate her.”
“Yes, but she has a great house,” Tricia insisted, a little too brightly.
“Oh, I get it. She’s going away and you’ve bribed the housekeeper to slip you the keys for the weekend,” Cassady said.
“No. She’s going to be there. The whole family’s going to be there.” Tricia’s smile stretched to the point where I feared it might permanently torque her small face like a bad facelift. “And if you guys don’t come with me, I could very well wind up being the one singing on the dining room table.”
Cassady shrugged. “Well, I can’t miss that. Count me in.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“That’s Molly’s way of saying that she’d love to come, too,” Cassady teased.
“Well, of course I’d love to, but I don’t get it. If Aunt Cynthia’s doing the whole black sheep thing, why’s the entire family trooping down there and why don’t you just plead heavy workload and not go?”
Tricia’s smile faltered. “It’s David’s engagement party.”
The Vincents are a fascinating family. New England bluebloods, super-Republican, the closest thing to aristocracy I’ve ever met. Tricia jokes that her ancestors came over on the advance ship
before
the
Mayflower,
to make sure the Colonies were suitable and that everything had been set up properly; planning and controlling are in her blood. Her parents live in Connecticut, but they also keep an apartment in the city because they’re constantly coming in for some function or another. They’ve always been lovely to Cassady and me. Tricia’s crazy about them, but they also make her crazy. Her favorite brother, David, is a case in point. She adores him, would walk out on the president to take a call from him, but David acts first and thinks second and usually calls Tricia to clean up third.
before
the
Mayflower,
to make sure the Colonies were suitable and that everything had been set up properly; planning and controlling are in her blood. Her parents live in Connecticut, but they also keep an apartment in the city because they’re constantly coming in for some function or another. They’ve always been lovely to Cassady and me. Tricia’s crazy about them, but they also make her crazy. Her favorite brother, David, is a case in point. She adores him, would walk out on the president to take a call from him, but David acts first and thinks second and usually calls Tricia to clean up third.
“They got engaged?” Cassady asked.
Tricia’s smile disappeared altogether. “Her parents are throwing some huge party in L.A., but Mother and Dad decided to up the ante and throw them a proper engagement party here first. Mother doesn’t think those show people on the Left Coast respect social ritual. But Mother and Dad’s little project turned into a whole weekend that turned into too many people for the house in Connecticut. Obviously, someone didn’t put the scotch away soon enough and got on the phone with Aunt Cynthia, and you guys have to come because I don’t know how I’ll get through it otherwise.” The fingernail of her right index finger dug into the cuticle of her right thumb, Tricia’s classic sign of distress.
“Of course we’ll be there,” I assured her, taking her hand in mine to stop the digging.
Then, because it is Cassady’s gift, she said the thing we were all thinking. “He’s really going to marry that bitch?”
For just a moment, I thought that glow beneath Tricia’s Dresden doll exterior was going to reveal itself to be molten lava and we were going to watch it erupt. But ever the lady, Tricia struggled to keep it all inside and lifted her glass instead. “To my brothers and their god-awful taste in women,” she toasted.
We clinked glasses in assent. In all the years we’d known Tricia (the three of us met as college freshmen thirteen years ago, but please don’t do the math), David and Richard Vincent had excelled at involvements with nightmarish women. Richard had gone so far as to marry Rebecca Somerset two years ago. Rebecca’s mom was electronics money, her dad was shipping money, and Rebecca was an heiress
cum
designer
cum
disaster. She was famous in a large number of nonintersecting social circles for consistently inappropriate and boorish behavior. I’d had the pleasure of seeing her in action at a fund-raiser
where she sat next to the Chilean consul’s wife at the head table of a five-k-a-plate banquet, loudly critiqued the poor woman’s dress and jewelry all through dinner—holding up the Chilean consul’s mistress as a paragon of style—then tried to redo her hair during the keynote address.
cum
designer
cum
disaster. She was famous in a large number of nonintersecting social circles for consistently inappropriate and boorish behavior. I’d had the pleasure of seeing her in action at a fund-raiser
where she sat next to the Chilean consul’s wife at the head table of a five-k-a-plate banquet, loudly critiqued the poor woman’s dress and jewelry all through dinner—holding up the Chilean consul’s mistress as a paragon of style—then tried to redo her hair during the keynote address.
After a very public romance, Richard and Rebecca eloped to Jamaica and Tricia’s mother literally took to her bed for a week. Richard and Rebecca had made it a whole thirteen months before splitting up—a full trip around the rocky cape of the calendar so they could ruin every holiday once, was Tricia’s theory—and the Vincent family was still reverberating, six months into the separation.
And now David was apparently engaged to Lisbet McCandless, one of the few women in America capable of making Rebecca look good by comparison. Lisbet was second-generation Hollywood, the spawn of a movie director and a studio executive, both famous for their tempers and sexual flexibility. Lisbet had been a sitcom star as a child; as a teenager, she drifted into a series of films quickly forgotten despite Lisbet’s willingness to do nudity.
Now in her twenties, Lisbet had worked her way back on to television, basic cable at least (rumor was, her mother was having an affair with the network executive who ordered the show). She played a rocket scientist who stumbles upon a government cover-up of life on Venus—the only thing that was covered up on the show. It was a huge hit, thanks mainly to the plunging necklines on Lisbet’s costumes, and the success put Lisbet back on top of the tabloid heap. Lately, she’d gotten into so many public brawls with other starlets that her father had shipped her out to do off-Broadway during hiatus as career rehab. David had met her shortly after her arrival in New York and they’d been paparazzi fodder ever since. And now they were engaged.
I put on my most optimistic expression. “So, your parents are throwing them a huge party. They must be pleased about the whole thing.”
Tricia scrunched up her face. “Mother’s terrorizing the staff and Dad’s taking way too many meetings. They’re not happy.”
“Then why the big party?”
Tricia sighed. “Apparently, Rebecca and Richard have one common belief left, which is that my parents were opposed to their marriage and undermined it from Day One.”
“Smart parents,” Cassady said.
“But in their shell shock, Mother and Dad apparently feel that if they make a big show of supporting David and Lisbet, those two won’t be able to accuse them of the same thing when their marriage blows up.” Tricia’s eyes narrowed. “And blow up, it will.”
“If it’s a big family thing, do you really want us there?” I asked.
“You’re more family to me than some of the piranhas in my gene pool. Besides, if you don’t come, who will join me as I sit with my bottle of champagne in the corner and sip and snipe?”
“Sounds like my kind of weekend. Count me in,” Cassady volunteered.
“Could be fascinating,” I had to admit.
“Thank you. I feel so much better about going now.” Tricia smiled genuinely and did seem immensely relieved.
Which is why, that Friday, I was overpacking my overnight bag and wondering when—possibly even, if—I should call Kyle and tell him I was going away He was trying to wrap up a case so I had no expectation of spending the weekend with him. When we’d last spoken, he’d said he didn’t know when we’d be able to get together. So if I called him now and told
him I was going away for the weekend, would it seem like I was forcing him to revisit the subject of our going away? I didn’t want to seem punitive. Or worse, clingy.
him I was going away for the weekend, would it seem like I was forcing him to revisit the subject of our going away? I didn’t want to seem punitive. Or worse, clingy.
Fortunately, I was spared the agony of examining this ethical dilemma by the fact that Kyle chose that moment to call me.
“Hey.” He said it warmly, but gave me no indication of whether he was standing in the middle of his office or in the middle of a pool of blood. “This a bad time?”
I opted for the breezy, no-big-deal approach. “No, actually good timing. I’m on my way out. What should I bring you back from Southampton?”
There was a pause. Brief, but still discernible. The Pause is risky, more for the recipient than for the pauser. Resist all you want, you’re still going to read something into the Pause, a problem that can feed on itself when the pauser realizes he’s paused and starts wondering about what you’re reading into his pause. You’re on one end of the phone, thinking he’s bracing himself to tell you bad news, to get his lie in proper order, to struggle against his desire to declare undying love. And he’s on his end, perhaps doing any one of those things, but maybe just stifling a sneeze or being momentarily distracted by some slut in an exceptionally tight T-shirt and gaudy belly ring.
Communication is the foundation of any good relationship, God help us.
“The weekend?”
I made sure I didn’t pause. “Uh-huh.”
“Going alone?”
“Does that affect your request?”
“Among other things.”
I liked that answer, and did my best to detect jealousy lurking around the edges. “Tricia’s family’s having a thing and she wants Cassady and me to come along and protect her.”
“Hazardous duty.”
“Only for my liver.”
“One of
those
weekends.”
those
weekends.”
“With any luck.”
“So you’re hoping to get lucky this weekend?”
“Ah. You can take the boy out of the interrogation room, but you can’t take the interrogation room out of the boy.”
“Or evasion out of the girl.”
“I’m going down to keep Tricia from telling her aunt what she really thinks of her. My sole mission.”
“Aunt’s a piece of work?”
“Putting it nicely. You may have heard of her. Cynthia Malinkov.”
“Any relation to Lev Malinkov, the developer?”
“Ex, with an emphasis on big alimony.”
“You’re a good friend.”
“It’s my only shot at heaven.”
He laughed. It was a great sound, especially because he didn’t do it very often. I stayed quiet, which I don’t do very often. It didn’t really constitute a Pause, because I was giving him the opportunity to say something in addition to the laugh. I was also realizing that he hadn’t said why he called.
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