Swept Up (10 page)

I know it wasn’t champagne and caviar.  And my proposal wasn’t that either.  But for me, his last sentence was one of the most romantic things anyone had ever said to me.

Wow.  The last week had brought about a lot of changes in my life.  I was officially engaged.  I’d won a Mortie for my screenplay.  I’d found another dead body. My best friend was having a baby, and I was going to be a godmother.  And now I was living with someone…officially.

Now, if we could just find the murderer, it would be a very good week indeed.

The next day, Cal had to go to a hearing for a guy he’d busted a while back.  He could have said he was taking personal time and got the court date pushed back, but he didn’t want to. 

I knew his hesitancy to go wasn’t that he was worried about me working on the investigation and not filling him in—it was that he was worried about me.

“Go,” I told him.  “My only plans for the day are to reread everything we’ve gathered and maybe got to
Psst
for lunch.”

“Nowhere else?” he asked.

“Honey made a new dish and invited Peri and me to try it.”

“You’ll be with Peri?” he asked.

I nodded.  “I will.”  I wasn’t sure what he thought Peri would do if some big, bad murderer came after me.  I wasn’t sure what he thought she’d do if a mouse came after me.  Or a bug.  Peri didn’t have any killer instincts.

Peri and Jerome still hadn’t been allowed to move back into their home.  They were staying at Le Celebre Hotel—which was home to Honey’s restaurant, Psst—so it was very convenient.

“Don’t forget, we’re partners in this,” he reminded me, as if I needed reminding.  “Talk to Honey, and to any of her staff that are there, but nowhere else, no one else without me.”

I knew what he was really saying was,
I’m afraid for you.  I love you.  Don’t get yourself killed.

I mock-spit in my hand and crossed my heart.  The boys used to do that all the time when they were younger. 

Only they didn’t mock spit.

Reluctantly, Cal left.

I did some laundry and reread all my notes.  I’d become a copious note-taker.  When Mr. Banning died, everything seemed so vivid—so much bolder than real life.  I figured there was no way I’d forget a single second of it.

Then I started writing the screenplay and realized how much of the detail was hazy. 

Determined to have a complete record of Mellie’s murder I’d been diligent this time.  My notepad was full, and I’d taped a number of conversations.

Somewhere in all those notes, there had to be something I’d missed.

But I couldn’t find it.

At noon, with details swimming through my head like some macabre film, I put the files away and hea
ded over to Le Celebre Hotel.  I went up to the Presidential Suite. 

Peri opened the door.

“Don’t say a word about this.…”  She waved her hand at the stately, opulent room.  “I told Jerome we should just stay with you, he said it was weird rooming with an ex-wife.  I pointed out you were more than that, you were the mother of his children and my friend.  He wouldn’t listen.  So, I agreed when he wanted to move out.  I thought we’d be in a normal hotel room, but Quincy, this is ten times bigger than my first apartment.  Not to name drop or anything, but George—“

“George?” I asked.

“Gorgeous George.  Come on, Quincy, he played a doctor on television and his his aunt was a famous singer.  Hollywood’s Gorgeous George.”

“Oh.”  I didn’t want to point out there were other George’s in Hollywood, because I’d have had to admit none were quite as gorgeous as he was.

“Yeah…oh,” Peri said.  “He has stayed here. I don’t have a lot of Hollywood crushes, but him I might crush on a bit.  Do you think that he might play Julian in
Dusted
?  Oh, he’d make a perfect Julian.  And of course, you’d get to know him and could introduce me.”

“Peri, I don’t know for sure
Dusted
is going to sell, and I think your George might make more than a movie airing on the HeartMark Channel can afford.”

She sighed.  “Well, a girl can dream.”

“How about dreaming on your way down to the restaurant?” I teased.  “If we’re late, Honey will be annoyed.  She’s preparing this just for us.”

“Let’s go.”

Honey Martin was a good friend.  Her daughter, Beatrix, aka Trixie—for all you Trixie Belden fans, their names make me smile, too—was Mile’s age.  We’d commiserated a lot about being the mothers of college-age children. 

We walked down to the lobby level and into
Psst
. 

“Well, if it isn’t our own Quincy Mac, award winning screenwriter and super-sleuth extraordinaire,” Honey shouted when she spotted us.

“I wish I was doing more screenwriting and less sleuthing this week,” I muttered.  Peri must have heard me because she wrapped her arm around mine and led me into Honey’s kitchen.  Everything was white and stainless steel.  It was as bright and shiny as Honey.

“I set a table for you back here, so that I could sit with you.”

Honey’s an artist.  I’m never exactly sure what she’s serving me, but it’s always beautifully presented and it’s always amazing to eat. 

Today’s dish, according to Honey, was a sandwich.

I looked at the plate she set in front of me and said, “I’m the mother of three boys, and I’ve made thousands of sandwiches, and this is to those what a hamburger is to filet mignon.”

The sandwich was pretty.  Paper-thin bread stuffed with some sort of salady thing sitting on a bed of some kind of coleslaw thing.  A red sauce was drizzled all over the place, and a small fruit salad ringed the entire presentation.

“I wanted something that was gluten free as well as vegan.  Something that would.…”

Peri had already popped her first bite in her mouth and said, “Wow.”

Honey clapped her hand.  “That was exactly the reaction what I wanted.”

We ate and I asked Honey to run through her recollections of the party.  She had a unique perspective.  She was there as a guest, but I’d already heard that she’d pitched in and overseen the bar and food.  I learned while investigating Mr. Banning’s murder that service people are invisible—well, I didn’t actually learn it then.  As someone who’d built her career in the service industry, I knew it from personal experience well before Mr. Banning. 

And even though Honey had been a guest, I thought there was a good chance she wasn’t noticed when she was behind the bar.

“I knew a lot of the people, but not all.  No one did anything that really stood out.  The girl who played you and her husband had a fight.  They were giving each other the cold shoulder for a while.”

“Did you see Mellie at all?” I asked as I took another bite.

“A couple times.  I saw when she came into the party.  No one seemed happy to see her.  I saw her drape herself over almost every available man at the party, but none of them seemed overly inclined to take her blatant offers.  And I already told Detective Randolph that I saw her talking to one guy I didn’t know.  They were on the other side of the room, so I didn’t get a good look at him, but it was close enough that I’d have recognized him if I knew him. I could tell Mellie had a cat-who-ate-the-canary sort of look, but he wasn’t happy at all.  Detective Randolph said he’s bringing over pictures of everyone on the guest list later.  I know it wasn’t anyone on the catering staff.”

I pulled out my cellphone and opened the file where I’d stashed all the guests’ pictures.

She thumbed through th
e photos as I finished the meal and said, “If I could live in a world where you or Big G cooked for me every night, life would be perfect.”

She stopped thumbing through the pictures and looked up at me.  “I’m going out with him.  I hope you don’t mind.”

I glanced at the picture on my phone. “Jonas?”
              She shook her head.  “No Big G.”

“Why would I mind?  That’s delightful news.”  To be honest, they were perfect for each other. 

Peri put down her fork and clapped her hands.  “Oh, that’s wonderful.  Quincy and I decided a while back the two of you were perfect for each other.  You both like food.  You’re both nice.  And—”

Honey held up her hand.  “He is nice.  And do you know, he’s read all the Trixie Belden books.”

Now, Big G was many things, but I’d never imagined that he was a fan of teen girl mysteries.

“Your expression is priceless,” Honey said, laughing.  “He read them when he was a kid and was laid up with a broken leg one summer.  His sister had the collection.  He was so cute when he told me he never felt emasculated by how much he liked them.  He claims they were manly in their own way, that there were enough major male characters that he felt they could be guy-reads.”

“So he enjoyed the fact that Beatrix is called Trixie?”

She nodded.  “That’s how the conversation started.  He realized the connection in our names.”

She started scanning through the pictures again.  “I don’t see him.”

“I haven’t got everyone picture yet.  Let me check out NetMovieDatabase and Facebook and see if I can find pictures of the dozen or so people I don’t have yet.  Can I text them to you?”

“Sure.”

Peri grinned as we left
Psst
.  “Honey saw a strange man talking to Mellie.  That has to be him. I just knew it wasn’t someone we knew and liked.”

“That would be too simple.  A strange man sneaks into your house and murders a woman who no one liked, then snuck out again without anyone being the wiser?” 
It was the perfect scenario, but I didn’t think someone with no connection to us killed Mellie.  It would make things simpler though.

And
sometimes the simplest answer was the best one. 
Occam’s Razor
.  Hey, I don’t just watch detective shows, I watch
Big Bang
, too.  And we all felt that the Mortie in Mellie’s hand was a distraction.  It made sense that someone who wasn’t connected to the movie wanted us to look at the movie.

“Yes.  A stranger.  Quincy, your friends are my friends, and I worked with the cast and crew.  The only person at the party who I think might be capable of murder was Mellie.”

I had to agree.

“Do you have any more investigating to do today?” Peri asked.

“No.  I promised Cal.  You, then lunch with Honey, then home.  He’s trying to pretend that he’s my trusty sidekick in this investigation, but he really sees himself as my bodyguard.  He’s convinced that whoever killed Mellie might come after me.”

“Why?” she asked.

“The Mortie.  It was too much like Mr. Banning’s murder.  We think it’s a distraction.  Someone put it there to have the cops concentrating on me and the movie.”

“Maybe you have a deranged fan.  Jerome made that movie last year about the actress with the deranged fan.  And there’s that Kathy Bates movie.  I love Kathy Bates.  She’s one of my favorite actors.”

“I like her, too, but frankly, I wouldn’t want her or anyone else to be my deranged fan.”

“But think of the screenplay you’d get out of that?  Dick would be thrilled.”

I laughed.  “He would.”

“So, listen, since you’re not allowed to investigate, I have an idea…”

“…and I will never listen to another one of Peri’s ideas again,” I told Cal that night.  “But before I knew it, she’d called Tiny and they dragged me to the bridal shop.”

“Oh, the horrors,” Cal exclaimed in a mocking sort of way.

“It was.  They called Mom and then texted her pictures as I tried on dresses.  They’ve all agreed that a traditional white Cinderella gown won’t do.  But none of them could agree on what they think I should wear.”

“What do you think you should wear?” he asked in a much more supportive way.

“Jeans and a Mac’Cleaner’s sweatshirt?” I asked.

He laughed, as if he thought I was joking.  “You’ll survive.”

“You think?”

“Quincy, clothes are clothes.  Whether you’re wearing a gown or jeans, you’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

Now, this was sweet.  You’d think that I’d be all swoony and melty.  And I was a bit, but Cal’s cavalier
clothes-are-clothes
attitude nettled a bit, so I shared my mother’s offer with relish. 

“I’m so glad you feel that way,
darling
.”  Now we rarely use terms of endearments.  He’s Cal.  Occasionally Caleb.  I’m Quincy.  Occasionally Quince.  So that
darling
caught his attention.

“Mom decided that I need something unique,” I said with relish.  “And given that I’d named Mac’Cleaners after our actual family name, she had a brilliant idea.  All the Mac men would wear kilts.  They all have them.  She was ordering a Mclean kilt for you before I even got home.”

His clothes-are-just-clothes expression disappeared and was replaced with horror.  “Wait, what?”

“Yes.  She wanted you and all the Mac men to wear kilts to our wedding.  Sporrans even.”