“Essex”—Cressida pulls him forward by the hand—“I’ve got access to every room in this house. I suggest we start in the fun room on the third floor then work our way down.” A husky laugh bubbles from her as she gives his tie a seductive tug.
Everett doesn’t go by his formal name, Essex, and the only people who get the privilege of calling him by his proper moniker are the women he’s bedded. It’s sort of a parting gift he offers, and they happily accept and flaunt it. The only exceptions are his mother and sister who have been calling him by his proper name since he was born and, of course, they get a pass.
And, even though I’ve danced horizontally with Everett many a time, in many a delicious way, on many a heated occasion, I’ve stuck with calling him by the name I’m most comfortable with, the one he asked me to call him to begin with, Everett. Judge Baxter here once presided over a case in which I was a defendant and wisely sided with me. We’ve been fast friends ever since—sort of.
Everett carefully removes Cressida’s well-manicured hands from his person. “I think I’m going to help bring in a few more desserts. But I’ll be out in no time.”
“What?” She looks my way with fire in her eyes. “Elves are not to mingle with guests under any circumstances. Doing so will not only be grounds for dismissal but may cause you to forfeit payment for your services.”
I gulp hard. I need to get paid.
Newsflash, blondie: I don’t bake for free.
Everett holds a hand up. “Cressie, please. I’ll be out in a moment.”
She snarls my way. “Fine. Have it your way. But Kippy is here, and he’s dying to speak with you. And I’ve got a fortune-teller and a tarot card reader just waiting to see the both of us. I just know we’re going to hear great things about our future.” She dots a kiss to his cheek before sashaying right back out of the kitchen.
“A fortune-teller and a tarot card reader?” I pull Everett in by the tie myself, and his brow hitches into his forehead as if he were amused. “When should we break it to her that this is a Christmas party and she’s hired the Halloween entertainment circuit?”
A dull laugh rumbles through him. “This is an eccentric crowd, Lemon. Only the unexpected can truly be expected.”
He follows me over to the island, and we both load up with Yule logs laid out on silver platters. My Yule logs are eccentric and unexpected themselves. They’re designed to look exactly like a holly laden log with the lines running through the frosting that gives it the illusion of being a genuine piece of lumber, and yet that cream-filled center assures you that you’re in for a delectable treat.
Speaking of frosting, Noah is determined to take me back to his place tonight to frost my proverbial cookies. Apparently, the doctor gave his body the thumbs-up and he can do with it as he pleases. And what Noah pleases is to please me.
“Everett, you have to tell me if Noah was trying to get the truth out of you. Does he suspect anything about our marriage or the baby?”
“Not at all.”
“Then what were you arguing about? What was on that note? Everett, you have been the one person I can always count on to be honest with me.” And you can bet your bottom holly jolly dollar that I’m about to use it against him. “You were the only person outside of my grandmother Nell that I let in on my secret.” It’s true—sort of. Last fall, Everett essentially blackmailed me into telling him about my supersensual standing—further classified as transmundane—meaning that I can see the dead on occasion. It turns out, my bio mom Carlotta shares my supernatural gift, too, but not to the extreme that I seem to have it. She’s not exactly stumbling upon the bodies the way I have been. She’s more or less transmundane light. All of the ghostly chills, none of the homicidal frills.
Everett glances hard at the floor as if he were contemplating the meaning of life.
“Okay, fine. But I don’t want you to worry.” His stormy blue eyes press into mine. “I’m presiding over a case that has one of the Canellis as a defendant. There has been some pressure by the Canellis to go easy on him.”
I suck in a never-ending breath. “Pressure from the Canellis? Oh my God, Everett. You need to dump this case. The Canellis are nothing but rotten, lying thieves and murderers!”
Another blonde socialite, angry and fierce looking, stomps her stilettos in our direction. It’s the queen bee herself, Larson Bentley. Her hair is pulled back into a tight chignon, her features are tiny and overall fragile looking, and her blue eyes beam out at us like death lasers. She is as mean as they come. With some people you can just tell, but with Larson, I happen to have had a taste of her rotten behavior before—albeit briefly.
“Both of you—get out there now.” She points hard to the roaring crowd just beyond the kitchen door. “I demand that you fill those dessert tables. And Essex, I need you on the dance floor and in my arms. As the hostess, it’s only fair I have the most handsome man at the ball by my side.” She gives a coy smile as she wags him over with the flick of her finger. “Just one dance. I need my fiancé good and jealous before the night is through.”
I avert my eyes at the thought. “Go ahead, Essex. Have your way with her.” I give a subtle wink as I take the platter from him. “I’ll follow you out.”
And I do just that and set my platters down before my arms fall off. A Yule log doesn’t only look like a hunk of chopped wood, it weighs about the same, too.
The grand ballroom is palatial, and its entire periphery is decorated in the thickest green garland, roped with gold beading and dotted with glossy red poinsettias the size of my head. Twinkle lights abound in soft white only, and a plethora of crystal chandeliers shine from above. There are hardly any tables set out. Mostly it’s red velvet sofas with high backs that are strewn about, giving this a smoky club appeal.
A large glittering sign hangs near the front that reads Welcome to the Jingle Ball! Let’s Make This a December to Remember…
Instrumental Christmas music blares from the speakers, and couples are actually figuring out a way to dance to it as they sway their bodies in the center of the room. And soon enough, Everett and Larson are right there joining them.
To the far right I spot a crowd around a couple of tables cloistered in the corner. A woman with a big purple wig is seated in front of a large glass ball—the fortune-teller, I’m assuming—and to her right is a woman dressed in layers of colorful clothing with bangle bracelets covering both arms as she doles out oversized cards to the eager-to-be-deceived people before her. Dead ahead of me is a huge open bar, and if that sounds quasi-normal, it’s not. There’s an entire army of men dressed in tuxedos meandering around the area in stilts with trays of cocktails in their hands. It looks precarious at best, silly to be honest, but in keeping with the holiday theme, each of them is wearing a tie that lights up like a Christmas tree.
And speaking of Christmas trees, the room is devoid of the traditional spruce. I guess even an army of party planners can miss a crucial detail when left to their eager-to-please devices. Unless, of course, Larson found that Christmas trees were oh-so-last-season, and something tells me the latter was true. But the creepy pièce de résistance is an enormous oil painting of a woman with dark hair up in a bun, wearing an off-white Victorian gown. The woman looks hauntingly beautiful, blatantly angry. I bet they keep that old biddy’s effigy around to ward off evil spirits.
In the thick of the crowd I spot my new half-sisters, Kelleth and Aspen. After Carlotta revealed to me that Mayor Harry Nash was my biological father, I gained two sisters and a brother right off the bat. Both Kelleth and Aspen look like replicas of their mother, Chrissy—who happens to be my own mother’s best friend. But unlike Chrissy, they’re not the easiest to get along with.
My younger sister, Meg, heads this way. Her long hair is freshly dyed black. It’s so dark it looks as if you can fall in it and end up on the other end of time. And juxtaposed against her icy blue eyes it’s a good look on her. Meg used to work the female wrestling circuit in Las Vegas as Madge the Badge
, but currently she’s teaching strippers their moves down at a club in Leeds called Red Satin.
“How do you like that, Lot?” Meg smacks my arm as she points to the dance floor. “I finally got the blonde octopus to stop pawing my man.”
Hook Redwood is the man in question. He and Meg have been together now for months, and just a few weeks back, Larson barreled into town and made a play for him. I make a face because she’s currently making a play for my man—sort of.
“How is she working out at the office?” I ask.
Hook runs his family’s real estate empire and recently hired Larson to join the team as a bona fide realtor. She’s not there for the money. She made it clear she was there for the man—Meg’s man. Apparently, her fiancé is more or less an accessory she’s only mildly interested in.
“She’ll be fired in a week.” Meg gives a slow blink as we watch her glide her body over Everett’s. “Hey? Are you busy next weekend?”
“Why?” As much as I love my baby sister—I’m older by a year, and I love to lord it over her—I’m skeptical about anything she might offer.
“I’m hosting my own Christmas shindig at the B&B. A bunch of girls from Vegas are coming through on their way to a convention in Burlington, and I thought I’d throw a party. I’m calling it Mistletoe Mania.”
“Why does the very name invoke a certain level of fear in me?”
She barks out a laugh and slaps me on the back. “Don’t worry, Lot. I promise nobody will harm you or that fake baby you’re carrying.”
“Would you shush?” I give a quick glance around in the event Noah is nearby. “It’s top secret, remember?” I had to tell just about everyone I knew that I was wink-wink pregnant. Thankfully, nobody but Everett and I know about my annulment going through so that lie will be easier to perpetuate.
“I remember.” She cranes her neck into the crowd. “Now that didn’t last long, did it?”
I follow her gaze to see Larson attaching herself to Hook Redwood as Everett is quickly taken over by the Christmas piranha herself, Cressida Bentley.
Meg growls, “I’m about to take care of this for the both of us.” She takes off just as Noah and Carlotta stride up.
Carlotta is my biological mother. She had me when she was just sixteen. She’s basically my look-alike but with a smattering of gray hair and a few wrinkles. She’s donned a gold glittery number tonight, short and tight, which seems to be the requisite, and I must say she looks as festive as can be.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, quickly attaching myself to Noah’s side.
“Nice to see you, too, Lot.” She’s quick to brandish a grin. “Believe it or not, I’m an invited guest of Topper Blakley’s. He’s very good friends with both the Bentleys and the Rosenbergs, and this place is crawling with both.”
A dull moan evicts from me. “Please don’t tell me my mother is here with him.”
My mother has a penchant for accruing bad boyfriends, and Topper Blakley is shooting for the bad boyfriend gold. He’s a wealthy entrepreneur well into his sixties or seventies—oh, who the heck knows. With all the work he’s had done he might as well be ten thousand. Nevertheless, he runs a perverted swingers app for seniors and I find him abhorrent. My mother, however, finds him otherwise, thus her persistence to cling by his side. The Bentleys and the Rosenbergs are notoriously close families, so it doesn’t surprise me to hear that they’re here in force.
Carlotta glances back and does a double take, so I follow her line of vision, only to find a reindeer prancing into the ballroom.
Everett was right. These people are so eccentric, only the unexpected can truly be expected tonight.
Carlotta gurgles out a laugh. “I think I see a new friend.” She trots off, and I shake my head at the sight.
“As if the fortune-teller, the tarot card reader, and the bartending staff on stilts weren’t enough, they had to drag innocent animals into the mix.”
Noah glances over and shakes his head. “Half the guests are animals, Lottie.” He nods to the oversized picture of the Victorian-era looking woman on the wall before us. “What do you think?”
“Lainey nailed it. She’s creepy,” I say. I take a moment to examine the stately looking woman with a cameo brooch pinned against the neck of her gown. Her dark hair is swept up with loose curls breaking through, and her skin is flawless. She’s beautiful, but the fact she’s refusing to smile is unnerving. “And those piercing blue eyes.” I shudder. “I feel like they can see right into my soul, and I’m betting she eats souls for breakfast, too. Who is she, anyway?”
“Larson’s mother, Isabelle Rosenberg.” He tips his head back to get a better look at her. “Carlotta was just telling me that she was murdered one hot August over six years ago. They never caught her killer. It’s been a cold case ever since. They call it the case of the cursed heiress. I’ve heard whispers.”
“Oh my goodness,” I say, taking a step in close to Noah and he wraps an arm around me lovingly. “That’s so very sad. No wonder they keep her picture in such a prominent place.” And here I thought it was to ward off evil spirits. I feel terrible just thinking it.
Carlotta strolls up with the furry beast by her side just as Everett makes his way over, looking no worse for wear.
“Looky here, Lottie,” Carlotta pats the beast on the back. “I’ve got another boy for you to fall in love with.”
“Aww!” I lean over and pet the darling reindeer right between the antlers. He’s huge, enormous in fact, and he has the biggest brown eyes you ever did see. His mouth is upturned in what I’d like to think was a contented smile even though he’s being paraded about like a creature of novelty for the enjoyment of the rich and infamous tonight. “What’s this handsome boy’s name?”
“Lottie?” Noah takes a breath.
“Lemon?” Everett shakes his head ever so slightly.
“Oh God,” I moan as I look to the furry beast, hoping against hope it’s not as it seems.
The majestic creature tips back its head and whinnies before looking right at me.
“My name is Rudolph.”
“He talks,” I whimper.
“That’s right.” Carlotta seems a little too gleeful about it. “And what does that mean, Lot?”
“It means someone here is about to die.”
It might be the holidays, but it’s beginning to look a lot like murder.
Chapter 2
Death. Murder. Homicide.
Hardly words you would associate with a seemingly innocent Christmas party.
A horrible moan comes from our left, and we make our way over to the fortune-teller seated at a round table with an oversized crystal ball swaying and bucking much to the delight of the crowd gathered around her. It’s the woman with the purple clown wig. Her face is powdered down a pale shade of green, and her eyes are drawn in dramatically in shades of blue and orange.
“I see a dangerous future for one of you seated before me.”
Carlotta gives the beast before us a tug on his antler.
“Hey, sleigh boy, see anyone over there who was once pretty special to you?”
He turns my way. “It’s not my time.” His fur lights up like a constellation of stars just as he fades out of sight.
In the beginning, I couldn’t hear the dead. And I certainly couldn’t hear a dead animal talk, but as my powers increased so did their talents, such as having the ability to move things in the material world whenever they wished—a horrifying event that my mother has nicely capitalized off of. Her haunted B&B rakes in the big bucks because of it. But lately, I can hear the dead, too, which has been both a blessing and a curse. Believe you me, it took a while to get used to hearing coherent sentences coming from an animal’s mouth. But truth be told, they make more sense than some of the humans I know.
The music pumps up to something livelier, and the bodies on the dance floor let out a spirited whoop.
Carlotta leans in. “I’d better get out there. Harry’s got quite a number of hus
sies amassed around him—and unlike your mother, I’m not interested in sharing. Scream really good when you find the body, Lot. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a corpse, and I want to see it. Consider it a gift from you to me.”
She takes off, and I shudder. “I will not find a body. I will not find a body.”
Noah’s chest bounces with a laugh as he wraps an arm around me. “Don’t worry, Lot. I’m not leaving your side all night.”
Everett’s brows bounce. “I guess that ups the odds of you playing the part of the corpse.”
“Everett.” I can hardly breathe at the thought. “Don’t even tease like that.”
“Essex!” Cressida waves him over to the crowd gathered around the purple-haired charlatan.
For the record, I don’t believe in fortune-tellers, or a bunch of silly cards that purport to predict the future, or mediums who claim they can speak to the dead—oh, wait.
I shake my head at Noah. “I’m not a medium,” I whisper. “I’m a good Christian girl who accidentally hears from the other side.”
Both he and Everett look curiously amused as we mosey over in a group toward the upper echelon crowd.
Larson looks amazing in her black sequin gown that hugs every inch of her. She has a model appeal. They all do. They also happen to have a plastic surgery appeal, or in the least they’ve been sanded down, plumped and filled. Their foreheads are identically smooth, and they seem to lack the ability to smile properly. I suppose that’s the curse of having your finances go haywire on your face.
Larson reaches back and plucks Hook into her circle from seemingly nowhere. Her arms wrap around him tight as she lands a juicy kiss to his lips, and now it’s not hard at all to guess who will bite the big one tonight.
Meg is clearly going to kill Larson.
Of course, I’ll have to cover for my sister and help her hide the obnoxious body. Good thing I have a homicide detective and a judge in my back pocket. I really do know how to pick ’em.
Yule Log Eulogy Page 2
