The Case of the Stained Stilettos

by Smith, Melissa J. L

  Thinking that she does not want Blaine to get the “permanent” option, either, she puts the suspicious plate in front of Dana’s chair.

  Looking past the bar area from their table, Joseph and Mercy spot Blaine’s Valkyrie rolling into the driveway. He exits the car, leaving the engine running. Dana is too intent on seducing Sal to notice that her husband has joined the party.

  Beth returns to the bar to interrupt Dana’s seduction of Sal by wrapping her arms around him.

  Sal smiles at Beth’s hugs, “How’s my party planner?”

  “Better off than our hostess,” Beth says, surveying the drunken Dana with disdain. To Dana, she says, “You know, I think your guests are getting restless. Shouldn’t you address the crowd?”

  Dana swirls a cherry around the empty glass, barely looking up at Beth. “What do you think I should tell the crowd, Beth? How about I address what sluts you and Susana are? That your kind just can’t stay away from my husband?”

  “Why you…” Beth reaches for the nearest object, which turns out to be a sugar bowl, and throws it at Dana before Sal can grab her. The crystal bowl misses Dana but bounces on the table and shatters on the tablecloth.

  Dana throws her head in the air and storms away from Beth and Sal and toward a podium that has been set up at the head table, a couple of feet from where Susana still is sitting, looking restless and unhappy. Dana looks down at Susana with disgust, then turns her attention to the crowd of three hundred or so guests who are seated at tables and milling around the grounds. Dana turns on the microphone and taps it to draw the guests’ attention and addresses the crowd grandly over the loudspeaker.

  “My friends. Thank you for coming tonight. We don’t get together often enough. I’m just sorry that Blaine...”

  Dana is interrupted by the sound of hurried footsteps and Blaine’s booming voice. He slides to the microphone, wrapping his arm around Dana and pulling her toward him in one smooth move, and addresses the crowd. “Good evening, everyone! I’m late and my gorgeous wife is ‘just sorry’ that her devoted husband can’t refrain from making a grand entrance … Aren’t you, my dear?”

  Blaine flamboyantly wraps both arms around Dana, then loosens his grip and waves to the crowd. Turning back to Dana, he snakes his left arm around her back, dips her, and gives her an over-the-top, theatrical kiss. The paparazzi outside the gates are going mad. Their shutters sound like hundreds of cicadas.

  Dana is startled but recovers quickly. She beams a stage smile up at him. “That’s not true, dahhling. One of the main reasons I married you was your ability to make … a grand entrance.”

  Blaine kisses her, and the crowd bursts into applause.

  At this moment, despite their problems, Dana and Blaine seem to be madly in love. Blaine wraps his arms around Dana to her delight.

  Blaine waves to Sal. “Sal, I’ll have what my wife is drinking. The aphrodisiac seems promising.” Looking at Dana’s smile, he continues, “On second thought, these work so well, you’d better bring me two. I think I have some catching up to do.”

  Sal calls out, “Two Lusty Wenches, coming right up.”

  Blaine looks surprised at the name of the drink and hugs Dana. “Better make it two margaritas, instead, Sal. I’ve got all of the Lusty Wench that I can handle, right here.”

  The Luce table watches Susana wink seductively at Blaine, and everyone hears Susana say out loud, “Oh, Blaine. I’m sure you can handle two Lusty Wenches in one evening.”

  Dana turns to look at Susana in horror, and it is only a moment before she is on the move, lunging at Susana with her manicured hand raised to slap her future daughter-in-law across the face.

  From a few yards away, Mark spots the unfolding action and picks up his pace, running to the table and grabbing Dana’s wrist just in time. “Mom, not in front of the guests,” he whispers frantically.

  Susana glares at the two of them, and as Dana stands down, Mark hands a bottle of pain pills to his fiancée. “Here you go, sweetie. Did you eat?” Susana nods and swallows the pain pills with coffee.

  Over by the bar, Sal puts two margaritas on a cocktail tray. Before he can react, Beth takes the tray away from him and hustles toward Dana’s table.

  As she reaches her destination, she gives Blaine a come-hither look. “Anything else I can get you, Blaine?” Pouring on a seductive tone, she adds, “Anything at all?”

  Dana glares at Beth, then at Blaine, who remains silent, doing nothing to ward off Beth’s blatant pass.

  With the microphone still on and broadcasting every sound to the whole party, Dana makes a kind of hissing, gurgling sound at Beth, and then turns toward Blaine. “Go away, Beth, and take Susana with you. Blaine and I are happy with what we have. Right, Blaine?”

  Noticing the crowd’s growing silence, Blaine realizes that the conversation is being heard over the speaker system. He smiles and gives another theatrical wave toward the crowd.

  “Absolutely!” he says, sounding like a bad actor, selling lines he doesn’t quite believe. “What more could a man want? A wonderful wife ... sharing a delicious meal with our friends...”

  Without a script, Blaine runs out of words, and looks at Dana nervously. Sensing the onset of another one of Dana’s tantrums, Blaine wrestles with the microphone, trying to turn it off. His hands are shaking so badly from tension and anger that he jams the switch and cannot turn it off.

  Dana scowls at Blaine’s bungled job on the microphone. With her hands on her hips, she turns her back on him, sits down, and angrily wolfs down two cannoli. She is about to eat the third one that Susana set aside earlier, but she stops herself, withdraws her hand, and stares straight ahead, ruminating.

  The entire Luce table has been watching the unfolding scene with increasing worry. A fight is definitely brewing, and they, and the other guests who are almost as close to Dana’s table, have gone eerily quiet.

  Sal arrives at Dana’s table and pushes between Beth and Blaine. Sal grabs the cocktail tray away from Beth, spilling a few drops of Blaine’s margaritas onto the ground in the process. Angrily, Sal holds the cocktail tray with one hand and glares at Beth until she backs away from Blaine.

  Beth storms off and spots Wesley and the maid, Sula, coordinating activity at the mansion doors. She frowns, feels around in her uniform pocket, drags out her car keys and disappears out of sight.

  Dana, livid at Susana’s and Beth’s passes at Blaine, and at her own inability to stop the girls from embarrassing her in front of the crowd, forcefully snatches one of the two margaritas from Sal’s tray.

  In the process, she slams her hand against the tray that holds the last drink. Sal loses his grip on the tray and the remaining margarita glass tumbles from the tray onto the table, shattering.

  Jealous and angry, Sal is frozen in his steps as the crowd murmurs embarrassment about the growing fracas.

  Not wanting to face the crowd, Sal picks up the remaining cannolo on the table. He eats the remaining cannolo that Beth had served, and that Susana had switched around twice. Then he picks up Dana’s untouched coffee cup to wash down the cannolo.

  Sal, head throbbing, pleads with Dana for relief. “Dana, you got anything for a headache?”

  Before Dana can respond, Susana hands Sal the bottle of pain pills that Mark had brought to her earlier.

  Dana hands the unbroken margarita glass to Sal. Sal takes the margarita from Dana and swallows the pain pills and chases them with the last two tranquilizers in his pocket.

  He puts his head in his hands and pleads with his friend. “Mark, I can’t take this pain anymore. Beth must be somewhere. I didn’t see where she went. Have her take care of everything. I have to get out of here.”

  Sal sets the empty margarita glass down on the table.

  Dana picks it up and licks the salt off the rim. Sal struggles to his catering truck, and leaves.

  Chapter 42

  Dana reaches for a wine bottle on the table and fills her glass. Blaine’s temper overrides his worry about th
e open microphone, and he explodes. Their screams blast over the speaker system. “No more, Dana. You’ve had enough!”

  The mighty actress rises from her seat, her temper also winning the battle with her good judgment. Too angry to care what anyone hears, she screams, “You bet I’ve had enough, and I’m not talking about the booze! I’m up to here with your slut girlfriends!” she spits, indicating the tops of her eyes.

  This attracts the attention of several of the swimmers in the pool and a group playing pool. Despite the temptation of landing a job-securing story, Carmella’s camera remains unused, true to her promise to herself.

  Mark’s, Dana’s and Blaine’s voices still can be heard over the speaker as Dana picks up the nearest wine bottle and hurls it at Blaine’s head, barely missing. The bottle lands about ten feet behind Blaine and smashes, causing a young starlet in a short black dress to jump back or be sprayed with glass. She bumps into her very tall date, a well-known hottie with a couple of small movie roles to his credit, who falls backward into a table full of other guests.

  As if in slow motion, the table heaves under the impact of his six-foot-five frame and then topples over, emptying plates of food and wine glasses and bottles and a lovely floral centerpiece onto the laps of several guests and splattering glass and long, brightly colored gerbera daisy stems all over the grass. Dana turns drunkenly toward the spectacle that is unfolding behind Blaine and lets out a loud guffaw.

  As the hottie tries to scramble up from his precarious position, he grabs a nearby woman inappropriately, either by accident or by design. The woman’s dress rips down the front, revealing the architecture of stick-on bra and double-stick tape that is creating her cleavage.

  Unfortunately for the hottie, the woman’s date is the town’s best stunt coordinator. Seeing his date standing mortified, the stuntman pulls the hottie up by the lapels and punches him, sending him flying into the laps of three nearby diners who jump up screaming.

  When the three diners jump up, the hottie’s spindly legs and arms splay out, grasping for something to steady himself. Instead, he grabs the tablecloth, pulling a three-tier cake, a tureen full of soup and several gravy boats onto the ground and splattering about a dozen nearby guests. A pyramid of cocktail glasses at the end of the table crashes to the ground, sending guests flying like dominoes.

  As the guests scramble to safety, they knock over a stanchion that falls and trips another group whose members are trying to run away from the flying food. Diners at another table find the “Keystone Cops” sequence so funny that they cannot stop laughing, prompting the gravy-wearers to reach down and pick up handfuls of cake to throw at the laughing guests.

  The fracas comes to an end when one end of the tent comes crashing down, collapsing in a heap of awning material and bent metal poles. Before the rest of the tent falls down, some of the caterers rush in to hold it up, and they work together to reinforce the poles.

  As the caterers try to save the tent, Mark runs over to help the guests and to apologize for the massive inconvenience. He is guiding guests away from the destruction and promising to cover dry cleaning bills when Wesley appears and helps guests into the house to clean up. Mark returns to Dana, who has been standing in one place with her hands on her head, and who looks like she is about to start shrieking. Mark whispers into her ear, while keeping his hand over the microphone so the guests cannot hear. “Mom, we already have a scandal on our hands. Please calm down or it could get much worse. Do you want me to get your tranquilizers for you?”

  Blaine, however, is close enough to hear Mark’s offer of more drugs and flies into a rage. With one powerful sweep of his hand, he clears the rest of the glassware on the table, sending it all crashing to the ground. “NO!” he shouts, jabbing a raised index finger at Mark’s face. “She’s had enough substance abuse for one day!”

  Mark grabs the neck of a broken wine bottle and aims it at Blaine’s face. Wesley grabs him by the arm and hisses into his ear, reminding him that cameras are flashing through the fence.

  “Why don’t you take a long walk off of a short pier, Blaine?” Mark says to his stepfather.

  Thinking better of his actions as he looks around to see cell phone cameras rolling and long lenses outside the fence, Mark throws the bottle neck down into the pile of glass that is building on the ground.

  Meanwhile, Dana looks like she is about to pop. She throws her hands up in the air, screaming “Why don’t all of you just leave me alone. I can’t take it anymore!”

  Dana shrieks as she hurls the last unbroken margarita glass at the diving board. The glass shatters near the few remaining swimmers. The swimmers scramble carefully out of the pool, trying to avoid the broken glass near their bare feet.

  The few remaining swimmers who have not been watching this entire spectacle unfold now grab their clothes and head toward the valet, shaking from the cold. At this point in the evening, risking the cold and cut feet seems preferable to being hit in the head by a flying bottle.

  Dana storms off toward the house, leaving her guests in shock.

  Blaine steps to the microphone and taps it to draw attention. He wonders if there is anyone in the county who is not paying attention by now and sighs audibly into the mic. “Friends, please excuse the chaos,” he says. “This is not what any of us expected. Please also excuse my wife. She’s obviously not herself this evening.”

  Blaine points to the pool area covered with scattered glass. He continues, saying, “We’ll get the pool man down here to clean up the glass immediately so everyone can continue having fun.” He points at Mark and says, “Let Mark know if you need anything.”

  Blaine turns and stalks to the house, his anger visible in every stride. He slams the door so hard that one of the windows breaks.

  At the Luce table, many of the participants view the evening’s events as just another episode of the Montgomery-Lathem-Jeffries’ frequent Saturday Night Fights. Carmella is less surprised than Helen, who is mortified for the hosts.

  Helen sees Mark looking around, desperately trying to figure out a way to leave the podium and go help his mother.

  Helen whispers to Carmella and the two women excuse themselves from the Luce table and make their way to Mark, who is looking around for Beth, per Sal’s request.

  Helen sticks out her hand to Dana’s frustrated son. “Mr. Lathem, I’m Helen Sands. We met briefly at Ethan Luce’s table. I’m the manager at The Vinery. And I believe that you already know Carmella Crayton.”

  Mark tries to appear nonchalant but does not succeed. “Yes, Ms. Sands. Of course. I truly apologize, but this isn’t the best time for me right now, as I’m sure you’ve seen.”

  Helen replies, “Yes, but things happen. If you can’t find … uh … Beth? She’s your party planner?”

  Mark nods, still trying to find Beth in the crowd.

  Helen takes Mark gently by the arm. “Mr. Lathem,” she says at first, then decides to call him by his first name, trying to get him to focus. “Mark. I’m the manager at The Vinery, in case you didn’t hear me. I would like to offer my services to substitute for your party planner and coordinate the Bella Palermo staff that’s still here and call anyone from our restaurant who is willing to come help clean up.”

  Carmella chimes in. “Me too, Mark. I don’t have Helen’s expertise, but I know how to follow the coach’s directions.”

  Mark looks startled. “Thank you, Ms. Sands, but….”

  “It’s ‘Helen,’ please,” she responds.

  “Helen, then,” he smiles. “And ... Carmella … that is a very kind offer, but I couldn’t impose. You’re all dressed up.”

  “I have sweats in the car and an extra pair for Helen. We’ll get this place cleaned up and you won’t wake up to a mess tomorrow morning,” says Carmella.

  Helen adds her expertise with a calm, rational argument. “Mark, The Vinery isn’t the first celebrity restaurant I’ve worked at. We need to get this taken care of. All you need after tonight’s fight is a bunch of vult
ures parked along the fence with long lenses and a story to tell, whether it’s true or not. There will be enough cell phone videos leaving with guests that will do enough damage.”

  Mark’s appreciation is a combination of relief and anger at the events of the evening. “Yes, please. Helen, anyone who can come over after The Vinery closes gets a thousand dollars each for the night. Same with the remaining Bella Palermo folks. Another thousand dollars per person on top of whatever they were supposed to make today.”

  Helen looks shocked. “That really isn’t necessary. People do good things for each other. I’ve learned that lesson again and again lately.”

  Mark says, “Well, here’s another lesson. The scrutiny in this industry can be debilitating. Carmella, I know you got a full-ride scholarship to college, but I imagine there are some college bills left to pay?”

  Carmella says, “Of course. For at least another decade.”

  Mark says, “And I believe I heard that you have a daughter, Helen?”

  Helen nods, wondering where his train of thought is going.

  “If you ladies can pull this off and make things look normal by morning, I personally will cut each of you a check for ten-thousand dollars,” says Mark.

  Helen and Carmella gasp and stutter about there being no need for such an exorbitant offer, only to have Mark shush them.

  “It’s the only way I will accept your kind offer. Agreed?” he asks. “And call the vendors. Tell them that we will triple their service fee if they can get out here tonight and collect everything. I’m sure Beth has the number somewhere in this mess.”

  Carmella answers first, “I know some of the vendors from other parties I’ve written about. Let me get changed and see what I can do.” She runs to her car, makes a quick stop, then goes into the house.

  Helen grabs her phone and starts recruiting workers from The Vinery and locates those remaining from Bella Palermo.