How to Host a Killer Party

by Penny Warner

  I held the first chocolate aloft, as if about to pop into my mouth, and said, “You’re a lot smarter than I thought, Chloe. I didn’t suspect you at all. I still don’t understand though. Why did you murder Ikea—and Andi? And try to kill Rocco? And me?”

  Chloe laughed. “Oh, you had it all wrong, right from the start. Everyone thinks the administrative assistant is just a drone, with no brain of her own. Meanwhile our party planner here thinks she’s Nancy Drew.”

  “I never thought you were a drone,” I said. “That’s why I’m surprised you committed the murders. Were you in on Ikea’s scheme to blackmail people who had an interest in Treasure Island? Or did you just find out about it and want a piece of the action?”

  Instead of responding, Chloe nudged the air with her gun. It clearly meant Eat up. I put the chocolate in my mouth and held it between my teeth, trying not to touch it with my tongue. Fear had dried up most of my saliva, which would slow down the melting process. If only she’d look away, I could spit it out—

  “Good girl. Yummy, isn’t it?” Her voice was filled with sarcasm. She began fiddling with her necklace as she talked. “So anyway, you’re half right. Ikea and I did have a good thing going—manipulating people who wanted something from the mayor. Ikea and I always talked about how we were going to be rich when we got out of college. We were sorority sisters at Berkeley. Tri Delts. So when the job at the mayor’s office opened up, I knew it would be a door to something big and lucrative.”

  “So you were in on it together,” I managed to say around the lump of chocolate in my teeth.

  “Yeah, but I was the brains behind it all. I introduced Ikea to Davin. He was just coming off a bad relationship, and I knew he’d fall for her. Who wouldn’t? It wasn’t long before she had him wrapped around her ring finger, if you know what I mean. I started giving her inside information about the special interest groups who wanted to influence the mayor, and she used it to our advantage. The money just poured in.” She paused, seemingly lost in a memory.

  “Then what went wrong?” I said, trying to keep her talking as long as possible. The words came out more like, “Den wa wen wong?”

  In the dim light, I could see her face darken, the lines around her mouth and eyes deepen. I stuck my tongue into my cheek and pretended to chew, then nodded for her to continue. At this point I couldn’t talk or she’d know I wasn’t eating the chocolate.

  “He proposed,” she said simply.

  I nodded as if I sympathized with her.

  She played with her necklace as tears glistened in her eyes. She sniffed, then said, “Oh, she was so thrilled. Neither of us expected the relationship to last. But I didn’t expect her to accept his proposal either. She certainly wasn’t in love with him. In fact, she had a few other men on the side.”

  I thought of Dakota as she paused, tears brimming her eyes again. Instantly I knew why—it was right out of my psych textbooks.

  “You were in love with Davin Green, weren’t you, Chloe?” I could barely get the words out without dribbling chocolate down my shirt.

  The gun in her hand snapped to attention. I was onto something.

  “And if she married him, that would change things, right?” I prompted her, then wiped the chocolate saliva off my bottom lip. Just keep her talking, I said to myself, hoping she didn’t notice the chocolate pouring from my mouth with each word.

  Chloe gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, Ikea decided she liked the idea of being the First Lady of San Francisco. She had her own personal plans for Treasure Island and knew she could talk Davin into doing what she wanted. Forget about those other groups. After scamming them out of all that money, there was nothing they could do. They certainly couldn’t tell the mayor they’d been bribing her to influence him.” As Chloe spoke, her voice grew raspy, her words biting.

  Wow. As a psych teacher, how could I have missed this other side of her?

  I squirmed, trying to get my leg comfortable on the floor, but moving my ankle sent a jolt of pain to my brain. The chocolate was really beginning to melt now. I had an overpowering urge to swallow the liquid that had gathered in my mouth. Another drizzle made its way down the side of my mouth and dripped onto my shirt. I hoped Chloe didn’t notice.

  “Aak!”

  Chloe suddenly jumped up from the chair. She swung the flashlight down at the floor in front of her, and with her gun hand, pulled up one of her pant legs.

  Three bloody lines ran down her ankle.

  Thursby, my attack cat, had apparently found a new scratching post.

  “Stupid cat!” she hissed, rubbing at the scratches. She tried to shoo him off with the gun but he just sat there, wondering, I’m sure, what all the fuss was about. “I really hate cats,” she said.

  While she was temporarily distracted, I took the moment to spit the remaining mouthful of chocolate into my hand and slipped the melted glob into my pants pocket.

  When she looked back up, I chewed on my tongue, wondering how long I could stall until the next dose.

  As if reading my mind, she shined the flashlight in my face. “I think it’s time for another chocolate.” She pointed the gun at my head.

  My heart skipped a few beats.

  “Swallow it, Presley. You’re taking too long. You wouldn’t want anything to happen to your kitty, would you? Maybe he’d like a chocolate.” She looked down at Thursby. “Kitty wanna chocolate?”

  Thursby didn’t move, but Fatman appeared and started for the sweet in her hand. Fatman never refused a meal. At his size, one bite of that chocolate and he’d be dead in seconds.

  I pretended to swallow. “Okay, okay, don’t hurt my cats.”

  “Good girl,” Chloe said, smiling. “Have another.”

  I fumbled with the bag, eventually pulling out another chocolate. Before I popped it in my mouth, I asked, “How would their marriage really change anything? The two of you could still go on taking bribes and making money.”

  Chloe sighed. “Isn’t it obvious? She wouldn’t need me anymore. What’s his would be hers—and he had plenty, believe me. I’d be out of the picture, with no more money coming in, other than that lousy paycheck. I can’t live on that.”

  I had to keep her talking, keep her distracted, buy time until I had a chance to figure out how I was going to get out of this.

  “So why did you have to kill her? Couldn’t you just blackmail her?” I glanced around my familiar little living room, searching for something, anything, to clobber her with. A lamp. A cat bowl. The video camera.

  There was nothing within reach.

  “She had . . . stuff . . . on me,” she said slowly.

  I knew my time was short. “But you helped with the wedding plans. Why would you do that if you didn’t want her to marry Davin?”

  “Because,” she said, “we used to talk about our dream weddings, back in the sorority house. She’d always wanted a big society wedding at a huge mansion with all the important people there. A surprise wedding would have pulled the red carpet right out from under her. And that’s exactly why I suggested it to the mayor.”

  She waved the gun at me again, indicating it was chocolate time. Using my clean hand, I palmed the next chocolate while pretending to pop it into my mouth.

  Chloe leveled the gun at my forehead. “Oh, come on, girl. You’re not much of a magician. Put the chocolate in your mouth and then open up and show me.”

  I should have practiced my prestidigitation skills a little more when I was a kid, but I could never make a rabbit come out of a hat, let alone do a card trick. Reluctantly, I obeyed.

  After verifying the chocolate was in my mouth, she lowered the gun and nodded. “Good girl.”

  Trying not to swallow the saliva that was puddling in my mouth, I asked again, working my tongue around the mouthful, “Did you really have to kill her? She was your friend.”

  Chloe frowned. “I know it sounds harsh, but after all I’d done for her—introducing her to the mayor and helping her get all that money—she was turning her
back on me. I was about to lose my best friend and my bonus income. These shoes don’t come cheap, you know.” She aimed the flashlight at her black suede Eccos. Perfect for working out at the gym or murdering a victim in her condo.

  “Besides, she threatened to have me fired! Like I said, she’d been collecting evidence against me all along—insurance, she called it—while destroying anything incriminating about herself. Couldn’t have that now, could I?” Sarcasm rolled off her tongue like liquid chocolate.

  I thought about the sex videotape she’d made of Ikea and Duncan. That piece of evidence had slipped through the cracks, so to speak.

  “So you poisoned Ikea at the wedding,” I managed to say around the viscous mass oozing in my mouth. In spite of my efforts, it was melting fast. I wondered just how much poison I was actually absorbing.

  And how much it would take.

  “Yeah,” she said, a smile curving her lips. “It was so easy, thanks to a little help from this young punk I hired.”

  “You hired someone?” It sounded more like “Ooo ired um un?” with the chocolate goo in my mouth.

  She nodded, grinning at her own cleverness. “Kid named Geoff Pike. Calls himself the G’Man. Ironic, since he’s a criminal, not a crime solver. When one of the island cops arrested him for breaking and entering and car theft, I checked him out. Paid him a visit at the city jail and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. I told him I’d get him released in exchange for some ‘assistance.’ It was a simple matter of forging the paperwork.”

  I guess it pays, in more ways than one, to work at the mayor’s office, I thought, fighting down the urge to swallow.

  “Once he got out, he had no choice but to do what I asked. He knew I could send him right back again. I set him up in one of the apartments on the island for convenience, got him an SUV and a cell phone, and just called him whenever I needed something. He was very accommodating.”

  “So he did all your dirty work,” I managed to say, dribbling a little chocolate spit down the front of my shirt.

  She shrugged, like it was no big thing.

  I figured the more I talked, the more I’d dribble, so I kept going, starting with the break-in we’d had at the office building. “He’s the one who stole the chocolate birds from Rocco’s supply the night before the party.”

  Chloe blinked, confirming my guess.

  “And injected the poison?”

  “Oh no,” she said, shaking her head. “He was too stupid to do that. The guy was a real rookie. After he got the chocolates, I injected the poison. Learned how from the Internet. Then all I had to do was smuggle them onto Alcatraz for the wedding—piece of cake, so to speak. Then I just waited for the opportunity to use them. When I saw Ikea on the dock, heading for the ferry, I knew I had my chance. I joined her, gave her a little hug, a few sympathetic words, and some chocolates to make her feel better.”

  “And after she ate them and started to get sick, you shoved her into the water,” I said. I choked on the collection of slime in my mouth.

  My cell phone suddenly rang. Chloe spotted my purse on the couch, grabbed it, and dumped out the contents, including my phone. As she glanced at the caller ID, I spit out the mass that had been the second chocolate and hid more of the sticky glob in my pants pocket, praying it wouldn’t show. At some point the moist chocolate would leak through, but for now I could keep it covered with my chocolate-covered T-shirt. When Chloe looked up, I had my tongue firmly stuck in my cheek again.

  “Nobody important,” she said, tossing the phone aside. “Time for you to swallow that.”

  Nobody important? Except maybe Raj. Or even Brad. Now no one would ever know the trouble I was in. I pretended to do as she asked, praying I wasn’t ingesting much of the poison while wondering if I’d be dead in a few minutes. Feeling dizzy, I rolled my eyes and swayed. Chloe watched me intently. I forced myself to focus—I had to keep her talking. She gestured with the gun again.

  I brought the third chocolate to my mouth, then stopped, hoping to stall with another question. “What about Ikea’s earring? How did it end up in the cache? Did you do that—or did you get your thug do that for you too?”

  Chloe pointed the gun at my mouth. I popped in the chocolate.

  “When Ikea started to fade, I took the earring off, figuring I could use it as a plant later. Pike was supposed to place it in your office for the cops to find, but the stupid kid apparently dropped it on the way over there.”

  I thought about the sequence of events that had followed: Duncan had found it, put it in the cache, and I’d discovered it soon afterward.

  I met her eyes. “So you planned to make it look like me all along?” I mumbled the words around the slimy wad as best I could.

  “Who better? You had the best motive. First you killed your party planner rival, Andi Sax. And then you killed the woman who ruined your big breakout party, Ikea Takeda. Made sense to me.”

  “But why kill Andi? You murdered her even before you killed Ikea.”

  “Andi, Andi, Andi.” Chloe sighed. “She just sort of got in the way. We had this fight about the party details—she hated the ball-and-chain theme—so I told the mayor he should fire her and hire someone who wasn’t such a diva. Andi was so mad about being let go that she told me she’d ruin the surprise for Ikea. And that, of course, would ruin my plan. So, before she left my office, I gave her some chocolates as a peace offering—chocolates I’d been practicing with—and promised I’d talk the mayor into hiring her for the next big function.”

  Chloe was on a roll. She’d temporarily forgotten about the poisoned chocolates she’d been forcing me to eat. That was the trouble with sociopathic egomaniacs with delusions of grandeur—they felt like they were the only ones in the room. All I had to do was keep the questions coming. “What was Andi doing on Treasure Island that day?”

  She laughed again. “I told her you were taking over the job and had stolen all the plans and ideas she’d already prepared. She said she was going straight over there to confront you about it. I guess she ate the chocolates on the way.”

  I needed another question to keep her distracted. Fast. “But, uh, why Rocco?”

  “Why not? I thought it would make you look extra guilty. The cops were already on your ass and I figured that would cinch it.” She waved the gun again. “Now, how about another chocolate? It’s time for your suicide. Obviously you’ve made a mess of things, the police are about to arrest you, and you can no longer live with your guilt. You used to be a psychologist. Isn’t that about right?”

  I suddenly groaned, clutched my stomach, and bent over.

  Chloe leaned forward in her chair.

  Feeling her breath, I raised my head and spat the chocolate into her face.

  “Ack!” she screamed, caught off guard. The gun went flying. I pulled my chocolate-covered hand out from under my leg and thrust the saliva-soaked poison-laden goo in her face, pushing her back as I smeared it. Rising up on one knee, my injured leg outstretched, I grabbed the helium tank that had tumbled out of the closet and brought it down on her head. She lost her balance and fell off the chair.

  Using the closet doorknob for support, I pushed myself up and hobbled toward the front door of the condo. I shoved the overturned chair aside, yanked the door open, and limped out. I heard Chloe cough as I staggered into the carport.

  I must have dazed her.

  That wouldn’t last.

  Outside, I saw a white SUV parked on the street.

  Brad!

  I dragged myself over and pounded on the door screaming his name. “Brad! Brad!” No response.

  “He’s not in there,” a voice behind me called.

  I turned to see Chloe in the doorway, her gun pointed directly at me. Her face looked like it was covered in shit. Ooey gooey chocolate.

  I yanked open the side door of Chloe’s SUV and scrambled in, the pain in my leg throbbing with every move I made. I pulled the door closed and locked it, then strained to lock the rest of the doors.

/>   Seconds later Chloe appeared at the driver’s side window waving the gun. I hunkered down out of sight, but I could still hear her voice.

  “It’s okay, Presley. Lie down. Relax. It won’t be long now. You’ve had more chocolates than I’ve given anyone else.”

  Was she right? Was it only a matter of minutes? Panicked, I stuck my fingers down my throat and tried to gag. How did bulimics do it?

  Getting nowhere, I looked around, searching for—I didn’t know what. On the passenger seat I recognized Chloe’s Coach bag. Purse meant cell phone. Obviously she wouldn’t bring her own phone into my condo and risk having it go off while she lay in wait.

  I grabbed the purse, emptied the contents out on the seat, and found the phone. As I flipped it open, I glanced back out the front window.

  Chloe was gone.

  I turned around.

  Her face appeared in the passenger’s window. She began pounding on the glass like a madwoman. When she saw me with the phone, she froze, her lips pulled back into an ugly grimace. She knew what I was about to do.

  Trying to stay focused, I punched in 911. When I looked up, Chloe had disappeared again. As I waited for an answer, she reappeared again at the driver’s side—this time lifting her gun to the window. Her arms shook as she held the gun in both hands. It was aimed directly at me.

  A gunshot rang out.

  The driver’s-side window shattered, filling the front seat with glass confetti. My ears rang as I gripped the phone tighter. I couldn’t hear whether anyone had answered the call. I couldn’t hear much of anything, except the ringing in my ears.

  I crawled to the back and screamed into the phone. “Help! I need help! She’s got a gun. She’s trying to—”

  Another shot rang out. A bullet whizzed by my head and ricocheted inside the SUV.

  An arm reached in through the front window. The door opened.

  Chloe was coming in.

  I scrambled over the backseat and scrunched down, not breathing, not moving. I was clearly at a disadvantage. I was injured, I couldn’t hear anything, and I didn’t have a gun. I could only pray someone had heard my 911 call—and then I remembered. I hadn’t given my address. The police couldn’t trace a cell phone call.