The group of friends standing around them laughed and clapped in encouragement, but you could feel the tension mounting in the rest of the room. Mr. Vincent took a step forward, but Mrs. Vincent put her hand on his arm and he stopped. Did Mrs. Vincent want Lisbet to embarrass herself, assuming that was possible, or was she concerned that a more painful scene would ensue if Mr. Vincent stepped in?
“Where’s Davey?” Tricia asked, scanning the crowd anxiously. “This is no way to start the weekend.”
“Want me to look for him?” I volunteered. There were a number of people in the room growing increasingly uncomfortable with the floor show, but everyone was deferring to Mr. and Mrs. Vincent about interceding. David would be able to call a halt to the proceedings with the least amount of political repercussions.
“Davey or Aunt Cynthia,” Tricia agreed. She started for the door, making urgent little circles with her hands to indicate that Cassady and I should walk with her.
We weren’t more than a dozen steps along when Aunt Cynthia and David entered of their own accord. Well, Aunt Cynthia did, anyway. She had David by the elbow, the instinctive pincer hold women use when they’re guiding a small child or an unwilling man.
“Wonder where they’ve been?” Tricia murmured.
“Behind the woodshed, from the looks of him,” Cassady suggested.
David did have a bit of the whipped dog about him. Whatever conversation he’d been having with his aunt, it hadn’t been nearly as entertaining as the one we’d had with her. And his expression just got harder and colder when he stepped into the great room and saw Lisbet and her dance team. Especially since two of Jake’s compatriots were now trying to hoist Lisbet up in the air upside down, so the champagne would pour into Jake’s eagerly open mouth. Lara and the camera got in so close it looked like Jake was going to swallow that, too. There was much fluttering of fabric and legs, a glimpse of panties, a lot of guffawing, and then David’s voice cut through the babble with an ice-cold edge.
“Time to go, Lisbet.”
The two guys holding Lisbet were still sober and sane enough to respond to David’s tone and put his fiancée down right away. Jake was buzzed enough to look bummed that his fun was over, but lucid enough to shut his mouth and stay quiet. Even Lara had the presence of mind to shut off the camera. It was Lisbet who rose to the occasion in a way everyone had hoped to avoid.
“Excuse me?” She wobbled a moment before finding her center of gravity, which, in a pair of Marc Jacobs perforated suede pumps, is no mean feat even when you’re perfectly sober. Once she’d stabilized, she put a hand on her hip and frowned at David. “What’s your problem?”
Tricia and her brothers grew up as camp followers for more political campaigns than any one of them could count, but they all developed the gift of the glib as a fringe benefit. “There doesn’t have to be a problem and I’d rather that there wasn’t one,” David assured his fiancée, who was beginning to sway a little. “It’s just time to go.”
“See, that’s a problem. I donwanna leave.”
David’s smile was thinning rapidly. “I usually love a good debate, but not now. Let’s go.”
Lisbet screwed her face into her approximation of a cute pout. “I don’t think so.”
“Then permit me to sweep you off your feet.” David scooped her up into his arms. He pivoted slightly so he could address the whole room. “Thank you all for being here tonight. We love you all, but we love each other more, so if you’ll excuse us …” He waggled an eyebrow and most of the crowd laughed politely, if not wholeheartedly. Mrs. Vincent looked like she’d never laugh again and Mr. Vincent was staring out the French doors.
David strode toward the main doors. Lisbet squirmed a little in his arms. “How dare you?” she began.
“Shut the hell up,” he growled under his breath as he carried her past us. Color rose in his cheeks and he couldn’t help but glance over at his sister. Tricia gave him a small nod of encouragement and held her breath until they were gone. Jake grabbed the camera from Lara, turned it back on, and tracked David and his burden out into the hallway like some bloodhound paparazzo. Lara trailed after him. It was the first time I’d seen her smile all night.
Mr. Vincent was the one who stole the microphone from the keyboard player this time. Before the buzz of people whispering to each other could even begin, he nipped it in the bud. “We’ll let the lovebirds be early birds, but we hope the rest of you will stay with us. The night is young and the bar is open.”
Tricia fidgeted, watching her mother with Richard and Rebecca across the room. “Well, aren’t we off to a smashing start.”
“David was marvelous. Dashing and romantic,” I told her.
“Davey is so in over his head.” She sighed. “What is it with my brothers and their taste in women?”
“Guys don’t want women with good taste, guys want women who taste good,” Cassady suggested.
Tricia’s head bobbed in something like a nod, but she really didn’t seem to be listening all that closely. “I’ll be back in a minute, I’m just going to talk to my parents.”
But as Tricia started toward them, Mr. and Mrs. Vincent walked out of the room. They weren’t snubbing Tricia, they weren’t even looking in her direction, but she still froze in the middle of the floor.
I nudged Cassady and we caught up with Tricia. “I’m sure they’re just checking on David and Lisbet.”
Cassady slid an arm around Tricia’s drooping shoulders. “Help your dad out and keep the party alive. Grab the bestlooking man you can find and drag him out on the dance floor.”
“Where are Richard and Rebecca?”
Cassady and I looked around, but we couldn’t spot them either. “Maybe the whole lovebird/early bird thing appealed to them, too.”
Tricia’s shoulders slumped. “I really cannot handle any more implications about my brothers’ sexual activities tonight.”
I couldn’t restrain my inner advice columnist any longer. “They’re grown men, Tricia. You don’t have to clean up after them.”
Tricia cut her luminous brown eyes at me so sharply I thought I had crossed a line. “Thank you, Dr. Freud.” Okay, I hadn’t crossed it, but I had walked right up to it and poked at it with my toe.
Still, I’d gotten through to some extent. Tricia took a deep breath. “Let’s dance.”
“With each other?”
“No, there’s been enough excitement for one night.”
We all spent some time dancing with David’s friends and trying to keep the energy in the room up. People seemed game at first, but after a while, people began drifting out. When it got down to a handful, Tricia suggested that we head upstairs and get comfortable. “I’m going to make a nightcap tray and bring it up. Then we can really unwind.”
Moments later, Cassady and I were settling into our room. It was such a treat to be in a place where the furniture was older than the plumbing. Tricia busied herself with the contents of a large silvery cocktail cart she had requisitioned from behind some swinging door deep in the center of the mansion.
Tricia clunked ice cubes so hard that I feared for the safety of the crystal. “Absolutely revolting. She’s dreadful and embarrassing and Davey deserves so much better.” Tricia dropped down in an armchair, glass still in her hand. She was flaring her nostrils and keeping her eyes a little too open, a sure sign that she was trying not to cry. Cassady and I swung into action. I moved over to sit next to her and Cassady took the glass from her and started mixing White Russians for all three of us.
“Your Aunt Cynthia looked like she was going to have a rather pointed conversation with both of them. She strikes me as quite able to straighten them out,” I said.
Tricia raked her small hands through her hair, but the chestnut bob fell perfectly back into place. Even in great distress, Tricia is the picture of poise. “I don’t want them to straighten it out,” she admitted quietly. “And I feel terrible about that.”
“You want what’s best for your brother a
nd you don’t think she’s it. There’s nothing wrong with that,” I assured her. “Particularly because it’s a pretty widely held opinion just about now.”
Cassady handed Tricia a White Russian. “As is the opinion that you have earned your nightcap. Drink up.”
Tricia lifted her glass, ready to drink deep, but froze when someone knocked on the door. “I don’t want to talk to my mother about this,” she whispered. “I’m not ready.”
I got up to answer the door while Tricia moved herself out of the line of sight. Cassady kept mixing, but with one eye on the door.
I eased the bedroom door open a crack, prepared to plead partial nudity, depending on whom the visitor was. At first, I couldn’t see anyone, but then something moved against the wall to the left of the door. Before I could open the door further, David’s face slid into view, our noses almost colliding as I peered out.
“David, you scared me.”
David looked pretty scared himself. “I need Tricia.”
I smelled alcohol on his breath, but there was something else, too. Chlorine. I inched the door open a bit more, trying to see him more fully. “Have you been swimming?”
“Where’s Tricia?” There was a panicky edge to his voice, but before I could question it, Tricia came up behind me and threw open the door.
“What is it now?” Tricia asked, a tad peevish.
David closed his eyes before answering. “Help me. Someone killed Lisbet.”
3
First impressions are so crucial in business, dating, and homicide investigations. The fact that I was standing poolside, not far from a dead body, barefoot, in my Nick & Nora cami and drawstring pants, was less than helpful in my effort to establish credibility with the professionals on the scene. This weekend had been intended as a getaway, not a hook-up opportunity, and I had packed accordingly. Good thing. A lacy chemise would have really sent the wrong message to Detective Myerson, who already seemed perplexed by me. At least I’d left my Washington Redskins sleep shirt at home.
As soon as what David had said sunk in, Tricia, Cassady, and I had rushed out to the pool with him. I’d grabbed my cell phone as we went, but David said he’d already called 911, after finding Lisbet in the pool, dragging her out, and trying CPR. Still, we all flew down the stairs focusing on the vain hope that he might be wrong, that Lisbet was somehow alive.
But once we saw her, there was no question. She was lying at the side of the pool, her body unnaturally neat and symmetrical as a result of David’s CPR efforts. Her wet hair clumped on either side of her throat, her skin was still wet but already too pale, her dress was ripped at the shoulder, and she was barefoot. It looked like a Helmut Newton photo shoot gone irrevocably bad. Even so, I felt for a pulse because it seemed to be a place to start.
“She’s dead.”
Tricia shrieked in surprise and I gasped pretty hard as Aunt Cynthia walked out of the pool house. She was wearing a red silk robe and matching mules; she’d been getting ready for bed, too. Lisbet’s Marc Jacobs pumps dangled from one hand and an open bottle of champagne was clutched in the other. “I’ve called the police,” she informed us.
“I already did,” David said weakly.
“David, do you know what happened here?” Aunt Cynthia asked with a cool detachment that either came from shock or an effort to keep larger emotions at bay.
Shaking his head, David started to crumble. “I was looking for her and she was in the water and I tried …” Tricia put a protective arm around him and he didn’t finish.
Aunt Cynthia nodded slowly. “I thought I heard people in the pool, which struck me as curious at this hour.” She held up the champagne bottle and the shoes. “She must have decided to go swimming and hit her head or was just too impaired.”
“But she’s fully dressed,” Tricia pointed out.
“Alcohol encourages stupid choices,” Aunt Cynthia said as though that was the end of the discussion. I couldn’t believe how composed she was, standing over a dead body and talking like a public service announcement. How drunk was she?
I didn’t get a chance to ask because the paramedics arrived and the noise of their arrival brought Mr. and Mrs. Vincent down. The paramedics didn’t have to do much to confirm that Lisbet was dead and they tried not to move her any more than necessary to preserve what might wind up being a crime scene. Mrs. Vincent almost fainted, but Mr. Vincent, like his sister, reacted with glacial composure. But his was shot through with anger, even though he mainly seemed furious that something had happened without his permission and outside his control.
When the heavy hitters—the medical examiner, the county homicide detectives—started arriving, Mrs. Vincent tried to get David to move inside, but he refused to budge. He said he needed to keep an eye on Lisbet. So he sat hunched on a chaise lounge; his mother sat beside him, her arms wrapped around him, trying to keep him warm and calm. She seemed to be losing on both fronts.
I could understand. The night breeze off the water was starting to get to me, as was the enormity of the situation, and I was several steps removed on the emotional involvement scale. Still, I was trying desperately not to shiver. I kept my jaw clenched and hoped the detective didn’t take it as a sign of obstinacy or belligerence. He had already gotten plenty of that from Mr. Vincent and Aunt Cynthia, who had talked to him with the clipped tones of regulars displeased with the service at their favorite restaurant.
Tricia and Cassady huddled together on another chaise. Cassady was watching the crime scene come together, but Tricia was watching David. There was something odd about the way she looked at him that I couldn’t quite pinpoint. It wasn’t pure concern, there was something darker and disquieting mixed in. She glanced up for a moment and caught me watching her. I nodded in encouragement, but she looked away. She was thinking something she didn’t want anyone to know about and Tricia knows how to keep her secrets.
Richard and Rebecca sat a few chaises down, taut and silent. Rebecca had attempted to console David and Mrs. Vincent, but both mother and son had rejected her overtures. She’d retreated to sit with Richard and quietly watch the horrible proceedings unfold.
“When’s the last time you saw the deceased?” Detective Myerson asked me. He was a spindly fellow—Ichabod Crane with a buzz cut—and I distracted myself wondering how he could stay warm with absolutely no built-in insulation. He was wearing a suit coat that smelled of old cigarettes and French fries, but I would have gladly taken it had he offered. He didn’t.
“David carried her out of the great room about ten.”
He sniffed significantly, then squinted as though he were in pain. I couldn’t tell if it was an editorial comment or a sinus condition. He’d already spoken to everyone else and we’d all talked to the uniformed officers before he arrived, so he had to see our stories were consistent. But the problem with consistent stories is, they don’t give you much to go on. You need something to stand out. “And you didn’t see her again?”
“No, we tried to keep the party going. It seemed like the polite thing to do.”
“Were you successful?”
“Briefly.”
“And then what?”
“People left, we went up to our rooms.”
“Everyone?”
“Other than the …” I groped for the word. Household servants? Domestic employees? It wasn’t a concept I dealt with on a daily basis, so I wasn’t sure what the current politically correct term was. “Staff. They were still cleaning when we went upstairs.”
He made a note of that, then squinted a little harder at what he’d written. Was something already emerging and worrying him? Or did he just need glasses?
“And where we are is … ?” a voice behind him asked and Detective Myerson’s squint deepened into a grimace of pain.
“Just getting warmed up,” Myerson said with the forced cheeriness I use when telling a small child on a airplane to pretty please stop kicking the back of my seat. Did we have a homicide detective who didn’t like homicides?
<
br /> Or did we have a cop who didn’t like his partner? The owner of the voice stepped around from behind Myerson now, a tall woman with close-cropped blond hair and icy blue eyes accentuated by high cheekbones and a sharp jawline. She looked like some Nordic avenging angel, ready to whip out a flaming sword and dispense justice where she saw fit. She wore a simple black suit with a skirt that was going to make it hard for her to kneel to collect evidence and a jacket so tailored that she’d never get it buttoned over her pistol. A string of onyx beads and moonstones was tucked inside her gray silk tee. She’d been called away from something fun to be here, which partially explained the tightness of her expression and skirt and Myerson’s uneasiness. She put a hand on his arm in greeting and he didn’t seem happy about it.
She moved the hand quickly and offered it to me. “Darcy Cook, Suffolk County Homicide.”
I shook her hand, trying to analyze her demeanor and Myerson’s reaction to her. “Molly Forrester, Manhattan civilian.”
Her Maid of Valhalla mask didn’t shift one iota. “What’s your relationship to the deceased, Ms. Forrester?”
“Tenuous.”
“Could you be more specific?”
“Friend of the sister of the fiancé.”
“And what’s your understanding of what happened here?”
“Your partner can fill you in,” I said, as much in his defense as in my own. Detective Myerson was staring passively at his notes. Apparently, this was Detective Cook’s standard operating procedure—start up the bulldozer and see who jumps out of the way.
“I’d like to hear it from you.”
“Go ahead, Ms. Forrester,” Detective Myerson said, eyes still on his notebook.
I played the highlight reel for her: engagement party; Lisbet as human champagne flute; David sweeping her out; David coming to get us. “He said he’d found her in the pool, he tried CPR, and he called 911.”
“Do you know what he told 911?”
“No,” I said, slowly and distinctly for emphasis and to test if it would irritate her, “I wasn’t there.”
Killer Cocktail Page 4
