How to Host a Killer Party

by Penny Warner

  “I don’t know. He mentioned something about a relationship with Ikea being over. . . .”

  Chloe laughed. “In his dreams. Look, Presley, Ikea was an attractive woman. A lot of men . . . liked her. But as far as I know, she was faithful to Mayor Green. I really think you’re on the wrong track.” She began to play with the triangle charm on her necklace and glanced at her closed office door before taking a deep breath—or was it a sigh? “Listen, I can’t talk to you about this anymore. You know that what goes on in the mayor’s office is confidential.” She squirmed and glanced again at the door. Lowering her voice, she said, “I will say this. . . .”

  I nodded, encouraging her to continue.

  “I don’t believe Ikea was killed because of the mayor. I think someone had a grudge against her for some other reason. I told you—she was very ambitious.”

  “But both Ikea and Andi had a connection to Mayor Green. If he wasn’t directly involved, then . . .”

  “Like I said earlier, Ikea had a lot of influence over the mayor. Obviously he was smitten with her or he wouldn’t have arranged that ridiculous wedding fiasco. I think that’s why the surprise was such a disaster. Ikea was a control freak. She wanted control over everything—her career, her love life, her future, the mayor, and of course her eventual wedding. When he took that away from her, she really freaked.”

  “So why did she end up dead?”

  Chloe shook her head wearily. “Good question. Maybe she did promise to influence the mayor in some way—and it didn’t happen. Or maybe she made someone angry for some other reason—who knows? But the chaos of that wedding party was the perfect opportunity for anyone who knew her to . . .”

  “Murder her,” I said, finishing her sentence.

  Chloe glanced at the door, then down at her desk. What was she worried about—that the mayor would come storming in and find her talking to me?

  She abruptly rose. “Um . . . I have to use the restroom.”

  I started to get up, taking the hint, but she waved me down. “Would you excuse me a minute?” I stared at her, puzzled, as she pulled a manila envelope from a desk drawer. She set the envelope on top of a stack of papers, tapped it twice with a red acrylic nail, and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  I watched her as she left the office and closed the door behind her.

  I turned back to the desk. And the envelope.

  Obviously she meant for me to open it. Was it some kind of a trap?

  Holding the envelope up by a corner, as if it were a dead rat, I dumped out the contents.

  A small notebook fell onto the paper-covered desk.

  I flipped it open with a finger.

  The page was filled with gibberish—random letters and numbers. I scanned through the first few sheets. Each page began with two different letters. First DH. Next XS. Then SC, ES, and so on. Down the left side of each page were what looked like dates—3/15, 4/14, and on. Next to each date was an indecipherable word with numbers next to it, plus the letter K—50K, 10K, 25K.

  DH—

  3/15—flsdnty—50K

  4/14—drgdlr—10K

  5/15—bnkrpt—10K

  6/15—txccvrp—25K

  If it was supposed to be some kind of code, it wasn’t very intricate. It didn’t take me long to guess that the double letters were initials—and familiar ones at that. DH was Dakota Hunter, XS Xtreme Siouxie; SC was Spaz Cruz, and ES Eugene Stadelhofer. There were several pages more with additional initials that I didn’t recognize.

  As for the K, that usually stood for thousand. So, were these amounts of money?

  It was the gibberish that I had trouble translating. I figured this was hardly written by a CIA operative; it must have been a code simple enough for the writer to remember and read. Recalling a consonant code from a Games magazine where all the vowels were missing and the letters were strung together, I sounded out the letters phonetically, to see if they made any sense.

  The first one: Flsdnty. I tried flesed nuty.Felse denuty? Then I got it.

  False . . . identity.

  Drgdlr. Drag dollar? Drug dealer.

  Bnkrpt was easy. Bankrupt.

  Txccvrp. Taxic—toxic. Cvrp—coverup. Toxic cover-up.

  Oh my God.

  DH—Dakota Hunter. False identity.

  XS—Xtreme Siouxie. A drug dealer.

  SC—Spaz Cruz was bankrupt.

  And ES—Eugene Stadelhofer—was involved in a toxic cover-up.

  God only knew what the others were up to.

  Whoever owned this notebook wasn’t the brightest balloon in the bouquet. Granted I couldn’t decode all the pages, but the ones I could told me everything I needed to know. Except who wrote this.

  Chloe? Not likely, or she wouldn’t have shared it with me. To make sure, I pulled a sheet of paper out from a nearby pile and compared her signature with the handwriting. Not even close.

  It must have been Ikea’s. Chloe must have found it in Ikea’s office—after her death. But why hadn’t she turned it in to the police?

  To protect the mayor, of course. If this got out, the scandal would kill his political career. And along with it, her job.

  But why let me see it?

  I didn’t have time to explore her reasons. I just hoped it would help me find out who killed Ikea. With little time left before my GPS Treasure Hunt, I slipped the notebook into my purse and hurried to my car. Chloe had trusted me enough to show me the damning notebook; I had to keep that trust as long as I could by not turning it over to the police. At least, not until after tonight.

  Breathless, I took a moment before turning the ignition. This thing was a whole lot bigger than I thought. Ikea had hidden information in that notebook—information about at least four people who had a major interest in TI.

  At least four people who also had something major to hide.

  And Ikea knew it all.

  Did the mayor know? Highly unlikely. That way Ikea could collect money—hundreds of thousands of dollars—from these desperate people who thought she was going to sway the mayor in their favor. At the same time, she had all kinds of blackmail material on each of them.

  She was killed because of it, I was certain. But by whom?

  And what did Andi Sax have to do with all this?

  Chapter 29

  PARTY PLANNING TIP #29:

  When life gives you lemons, have a lemonade party!

  There’s nothing like a festive gathering to give you and your friends a little boost when things look bleak.

  So. Ikea ran her own little business on the side, thanks to “referrals” from an unsuspecting mayor.

  Or was he all that innocent?

  Chloe had been a gold mine of information. She’d done the right thing by giving me that notebook—at least to my mind—in spite of the possibility she might lose her job. I hoped I could make it up to her one day.

  I still had a few loose ends to tie up—including the part that Andi Sax played in all this. But I was sure everything would come together when the killer showed his or her hand tonight at the bogus treasure hunt. The invited guests wouldn’t dare dis the mayor and not show up—would they? And when the killer discovered Ikea’s gold earring hidden in the cache, I’d be right there to see the reaction. With Berk filming the whole thing.

  Back at my office, I waved to Delicia, the only one inside the building besides me, then opened up my computer to do a little Googling. While I knew better than to rely completely on information I’d gathered from the Internet, it was better than nothing.

  What I found was eye-popping.

  To begin with, Dakota Hunter had apparently had a little trouble with his tribe. After fifteen minutes of searching dead ends, I found an Indian advocacy group called SmokeSignals.org. There were several posts questioning the authenticity of his Indian roots, including one member of the Miwok tribe who claimed he could find no connection to the tribe that Dakota claimed as his own.

  Not a real Miwok? Whoa. Was he even an Indian?


  Thirty minutes later I found a site called BoxOffice-Bombs. com that had the scoop on Lucas “Spaz” Cruz. According to someone named Perez Hilton, Cruz had quietly gone bankrupt this year. The site mentioned half a dozen money-losing disasters, including Vampire: The Musical. Another writer, a film critic, said, “Cruz seems to be under the self-delusion that a bigger, fancier studio will turn things around. It’ll take a lot more than an island to remake this man. And knowing Cruz, he’s got a few special effects up his sleeve—not all completely legit.”

  So how did he think he’d manage the big turnaround? First by getting the mayor to hand over Treasure Island. And then what? By getting investors to buy TI real estate at a low cost? Possibly at a ballooning loan?

  It didn’t take long for Xtreme Siouxie, aka Susan Steinhardt, to pop up on a site called CaliforniaCrimeWatch. She’d been arrested numerous times for protesting to save the island as a nature habitat. But she’d also racked up some arrests for growing and dealing marijuana, claiming it was for “medicinal purposes.” No real surprise there.

  But did the lofty end justify the lawbreaking means? Or did it just justify her own personal—and financial—means?

  And finally, Admiral Eugene Stadelhofer. By searching a few military fringe sites, I found the project my mother had been referring to—ProjectSHAD.com. It appeared the admiral was little more than a blustery egomaniac who used his power to try to cover up a scandal decades old. The site claimed Stadelhofer had supervised secret chemical and germ warfare tests conducted on TI in the fifties and sixties, called Project SHAD, an acronym for ship habitation and decontamination. There was little doubt that he’d been responsible for exposing his sailors to radiation, anthrax, plague, botulism, and deadly nerve agents. According to the site’s chat room, the men, used as guinea pigs, had experienced headaches, memory loss, cancer, wounds that didn’t heal, and so on. Thanks to Admiral Stadelhofer’s insistence on military secrecy, none of the sailors could ever prove a connection to the testing, so they never received disability payments.

  Outrageous. Had Stadelhofer really been covering up his part in contaminating—and killing—hundreds of innocent seamen all these years? How could he have gotten away with such atrocities in this day and age?

  I sat back at my desk, overwhelmed with all the possible motives these “friends of the mayor” had. Except perhaps Siouxie. Although the most outspoken, she seemed to have the least to gain.

  Unless there was a major drug connection . . .

  A voice came from over my shoulder. “Whatcha doing?” I’d been so engrossed in my notes, I hadn’t noticed Delicia come in.

  I sat back and tapped my pen on my desk. “Just doing some research. You know.”

  She pulled up the folding chair and sat down. “Trying to solve this mystery by yourself, aren’t you, Nancy Drew? Listen—you’ve got a great stunt planned for tonight. You’re sure to find out something. Have you learned anything new?”

  I shared my notes with her, ending with my suspicions about the mayor. She listened patiently while doodling on a scratch pad. When I was finished, and her pad was filled with little cartoon figures, she said, “The mayor does look good for this. Politicians do all kinds of bad things—including murder. They think they’re above everyone else.”

  “I know, but I can’t find anything concrete on Mayor Green. He’s practically a saint.”

  Delicia spun my laptop around and started typing. “Let’s try this. . . .” She punched in a couple of gossip sites, like Drudge.com and YouElectedThem.com. Nothing came up on the mayor, other than all his good deeds. She tried one more search, linking “Davin Green” and “Treasure Island.” Bingo.

  “Looks like he’s been stalling on his decision regarding Treasure Island for over two years,” she said, summing up the article, written by “A Disgruntled Supervisor.” “This guy, whoever he is, says Green has his own secret agenda for the island—but it doesn’t say what. Probably can’t say, without getting sued for slander.”

  “Libel,” I said, “but that’s not exactly a motive to murder his bride-to-be. Or a party planner.”

  Delicia held up a finger. “Unless she—or they—found out something he didn’t want anyone to know. Ikea was extremely close to him, so she could have learned something incriminating. And he’d worked with Andi a lot. Hey! Maybe they were having a secret affair . . . and Ikea found out . . . and he had to kill both of them. . . .”

  I laughed. “Nice try, but I think you’ve been reading too many bad scripts. Actually, someone”—I decided to try to protect the innocent—“gave me a notebook that Ikea kept.” I pulled the notebook from my purse and handed it to Delicia. If I couldn’t trust her, who could I trust? “It sure looks like Ikea was either blackmailing a bunch of people, or taking their money and promising mayoral favors. Or both. But I still don’t know who killed her.”

  “What do you mean?” Delicia asked, flipping through the notebook.

  “Well, if there were all these people who were paying Ikea to insure their special interests with the mayor—each without the others’ knowledge—she could have been pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars with no intention of helping anyone. And they couldn’t do anything about it because it would compromise them as well.”

  “That’s what all these scribbles mean?” Delicia asked, looking up. “Hey, maybe Ikea was saving Treasure Island for herself. I mean, maybe she planned to take over the place, build a big mansion, keep the riffraff out. . . .”

  I looked down at my list, remembering what I’d learned from watching CSI. Gil Grissom said it was all about the physical evidence.

  So what was the physical evidence?

  Close-up on the missing earring.

  Chloe had said the mayor bought the earrings for Ikea as a surprise for that night and had had them engraved. He gave them to her so she’d be wearing them at the wedding.

  Then one ended up in a geocache on Treasure Island.

  How did it get there? Was that random—or deliberate?

  “Well, I gotta get back to work,” Delicia said, placing Ikea’s notebook on my desk. “I’ve got a party to decorate, and my boss is a slave driver.”

  I smiled as she headed back to her office to finish creating the clues. I stood up, stretched, and glanced down the hall. Berkeley was in his office, fiddling with his video camera—which reminded me. I still had to look at that wedding tape—as soon as I had a free moment. Duncan was unboxing a bunch of GPS devices in the back office. I giggled when I spotted Raj. He was practicing his quick draw in one of the window reflections. What a team we all made.

  I checked the time. Five o’clock. Three hours until showtime. Just enough time to make a quick trip to city hall.

  According to Chloe, Ikea had her own office at city hall, thanks to Mayor Green. I passed through the metal detector and headed up the stairs, hoping her office would be near the mayor’s, and easy to find. But a quick search of the doorplates proved me wrong. No IKEA TAKEDA.

  I picked up a nearby wall phone and dialed the security number listed there for emergencies.

  “Guard.”

  “Yes, hi. This is Presley Parker, the mayor’s event planner. I left some of my things in Ikea Takeda’s office, and I need them for another event I’m hosting for the mayor tonight. I wondered if you could let me in so I could collect them? The mayor will kill me if I don’t bring the props for the treasure hunt tonight.”

  “Be right there,” came the response.

  Moments later a uniformed security guard met me on the second floor with a ring of keys. Fiftysomething, African American, he had a bowlegged walk and looked tired, with droopy eyes and a turned-down mouth.

  “Hi!” I said too cheerily.

  He nodded. “Got ID?”

  I handed him my business card.

  He took it between his bony fingers. “Killer Parties, huh? You did that wedding thing for the mayor. I read about it.” He handed it back.

  “Yep. That was me.”

 
; “Didn’t go so well, eh?” He eyed me through the bottom half of his bifocals.

  Not knowing what to say, I shrugged.

  “Too bad,” he said with little emotion. Perhaps Ikea wasn’t a favorite around these parts? “I’ll have to escort you in.”

  “Of course. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it. I’ll be in real trouble if I screw this one up.”

  I followed him down the hall to an unmarked room. That’s why I couldn’t find Ikea’s office. No nameplate. He opened the lock, accompanied by a lot of jingling and jangling of keys. Holding the door open, he nodded for me to enter. I squeezed by him and headed inside.

  The room had already been cleared out. Only an empty desk and lone file cabinet remained. Had the mayor taken care of it? Or the police?

  I shook my head, trying to look disappointed. “Wow. Looks like they took all my stuff.” I turned to the guard. “Well, thanks anyway.”

  As I reached the doorway, I stumbled and dropped my purse. Knowing a gentleman when I saw one, I knew he’d pick it up. As he bent over, I wadded up my business card and stuffed it into the door notch. I hoped the trick would work as well with paper as it did with gum.

  “Thanks!” I said again as he returned my purse. “I’ve got a big event for the mayor tonight and . . .” Blah, blah, blah . . . I rambled on as he pulled the door shut. As we started for the staircase, I asked, “Is there a restroom nearby?”

  He pointed back to an alcove nearly hidden along the hallway.

  “Thanks,” I said, and gave a little wave. “I can find my way out.”

  “Have a nice day,” he said robotically as he moved on.

  I headed in the other direction for the restrooms, ducked inside, and wiped away the beads of sweat that had been tickling my forehead.

  After waiting five minutes—a long time for a person with ADHD—I peeked out, saw the coast was clear, and returned to Ikea Takeda’s office.

  Chapter 30

  PARTY PLANNING TIP #30: