Killer Cocktail

by Sheryl J. Anderson

  “How nice,” Tricia whispered before marching resolutely over to her mother and sister-in-law and kissing them both on the cheek. I followed along, but only said hello.

  Mrs. Vincent shook my hand briefly. “Hello, Molly,” she said politely.

  “Thank you for coming. We appreciate your support,” Rebecca said, squeezing my hand like a politician. “I understand you’ve been trying to help, and it was a nice thought.”

  I had a couple of not so nice thoughts about that, but out of respect—for Tricia, not for anyone else—I kept them to myself.

  “Nice necklace,” Tricia complimented. I couldn’t have sounded so even and I’d never asked to wear the thing.

  Rebecca patted it reverently. “Thank you.”

  “I thought it would look so nice on her and she’s been such an angel through all this.” Mrs. Vincent pressed her cheek to Rebecca’s. I had to give Rebecca credit, she was playing her part admirably, even though her holier-than-thou attitude was going to send me screaming to the bar in another two minutes.

  “So,” Tricia asked, “is there an agenda for today?”

  If her mother noticed the double question, she managed not to blink. “Cocktails, then lunch, then there will be an opportunity for people to speak to David and offer their support.”

  On the other side of the room, half a football field away, Mr. Vincent had a son on each side of him and was working the crowd, in political/fund-raising mode. The guests were almost all in formal business attire, suits in respectable colors and cuts, restrained shoes, minimal jewelry. Even the few flashy standouts were flashy only in that deliberate Park Avenue way.

  The guest list appeared heavy on the senior Vincents’ friends and lighter on the junior end of the spectrum. I didn’t know if that was planned or a function of my generation’s inability to show up anywhere on time. But I also surmised that one of the purposes of this gathering was to assure the senior Vincents that their friends were familiar with tragedy, too, and were standing by them. Or at least, not shunning them.

  “Anything I can do to help?” Tricia offered bravely.

  “That awful Crawford girl is here and I understand she’s dating a young man at the Times. Perhaps you and Molly could talk to her and make sure she’s not gathering information for him,” Mrs. Vincent said.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Tricia said.

  “We don’t have to worry about that with you, do we, Molly?” Mrs. Vincent continued.

  “No, ma’am, I’m not dating anyone at the Times,” I assured her. “In fact, I’m thinking about canceling my subscription. I heard a rumor they hired an old boyfriend of mine, Peter Mulcahey, who doesn’t write or behave nearly as well as I do.” Mrs. Vincent laughed, but Tricia glanced over at me, wondering if I was deliberately sidestepping the issue of my own article. Which I was.

  “Is Aunt Cynthia here?” Tricia asked, making it sound like a casual afterthought.

  “Last I knew, she was in the kitchen straightening out the caterer. Go find Regan Crawford, dear, and make sure she’s not reading anyone’s diary.”

  “I’m this far from giving Regan the keys to the attic. Just for starters,” Tricia told me through clenched teeth as we walked out of the room and down the hallway.

  “We looking for her?” I asked.

  “Only if she’s hiding behind Aunt Cynthia,” Tricia replied. She stopped outside the door to the kitchen, turning to face me. “After Aunt Cynthia agrees to talk to me, you should be safe for ten minutes. So, excuse yourself to go to the bathroom. She’s staying in the room on the right, just past the bathroom. See what you can find, then I’ll meet you back in the drawing room and we’ll go from there.”

  What I was hoping to find was the dress Aunt Cynthia was wearing the night of the party or the robe she had on poolside or anything else that might have been overlooked by the police and by Aunt Cynthia herself that might now yield evidence tying her to Lisbet’s death. “On the right. Got it.”

  Tricia took a deep breath and pushed open the kitchen door. The Vincent kitchen made the ones in Viking magazine ads look cramped and dowdy. It was a vast expanse of gleaming steel, brilliant glass, and sparkling tile. At the moment, it was crowded with white-jacketed hired help filling trays and preparing plates while Aunt Cynthia argued with a chef over the amount of dill in the salad dressing.

  Her point made, Aunt Cynthia detached herself from the chef, missing the vicious look he gave her back, and came to greet us. “Friendly faces!” she exclaimed, hugging Tricia so enthusiastically that the bangles clanged mightily, seeming to resound throughout the room. Aunt Cynthia offered me a kiss on the cheek, which was sufficient since I knew why I was really there. Followed by a pat on the cheek and one more chorus of the bangles.

  “I hate to interrupt, but I need to talk to you,” Tricia told her. “Could I have a moment?”

  “Anything you want,” Aunt Cynthia assured her. I followed the two of them as Tricia led the way back down the hallway to a small sitting room decorated in a hunting theme that was just this side of precious.

  Tricia sat on a brocade loveseat and pulled Aunt Cynthia down beside her. “Molly and I were just discussing, Dad doesn’t look at all well. Do you think the stress is too much for him? Should he excuse himself from the meal?”

  Aunt Cynthia frowned. “I thought he looked flushed, but I wasn’t sure. This has been so hard on him.”

  I stood up. “I’m sorry. The rest room?” They pointed in unison. “I’ll be right back.” I slipped out of the room as Aunt Cynthia launched into a recitation of all the ways in which her brother had not been properly caring for his health even before the tragedy and Tricia nodded encouragingly. Funny thing was, Mr. Vincent looked great, but whatever worked.

  Out in the hall, I took a moment to get my bearings. Just past the bathroom, on the right. I checked the hallway in both directions to make sure no one was coming and slunk down to the door. There was an awful moment when I thought it was locked, but I gave the knob an extra twist and it opened.

  The room was a guest room, with the careful anonymity of a room that has to serve a wide range of people. The sleigh bed and matching dressers were gorgeous, though the ice blue drapes and bedspread were too cool for my taste. But it was the armoire I was interested in.

  My heart pounded as I eased open the doors of the armoire, hoping against hope that the multicolored tiered silk dress would be hanging right in the middle. It wasn’t. In fact, the armoire was half-filled with men’s clothes. Were these Nelson’s clothes? How open were they being about their relationship?

  I skimmed through the hanging clothes with a growing sense of dread. These weren’t Aunt Cynthia’s clothes. They were Rebecca’s. The men’s clothes were Richard’s. I rethought the directions Tricia had given me and realized I’d made a stupid mistake. She’d said the room was on the right and she’d said it while she was facing the main entry. I’d gone right with my back to the entry. I was in the wrong room.

  Mindful of the limited time, I hurriedly slid the clothes back into place, but one of Rebecca’s longer dresses caught on a classic Vuitton satchel on the floor of the armoire. I bent down to unsnag the hem and slide the satchel back into place. When I did, the satchel gave an unmistakable gurgle.

  I knelt down and carefully unzipped the satchel. Cradled in a Nautica sweatshirt, the champagne bottle was turned so I could only see part of the back label. Pulling my sleeve down over my hand, I nudged the bottle around until I could see the front label. It was one of the bottles from the party. And the bottom right-hand edge of the label was torn, frayed, and pulled up from the bottle.

  I sat back on my heels, light-headed. How had they kept this away from the police? Was Rebecca hiding the bottle for Aunt Cynthia? Had Aunt Cynthia planted it on Rebecca? Or had I been wrong? My heart thudded so hard I could barely hear myself think. Could Rebecca have done this? Would Rebecca have done this?

  The most pressing question was, should I take the bottle with me or leave
it there? I didn’t want to contaminate it but I didn’t want to lose it either. Where was I going to put it if I took it out of the room? It didn’t exactly fit under my skirt, but I couldn’t be sure of getting to Tricia without anyone else seeing me first. I stood, the bottle in my hand, still thinking. I turned around and almost stepped on Rebecca’s toes.

  “Isn’t this a surprise,” she said with an ugly sneer, her fingers tapping languidly on the emerald necklace.

  I kept the bottle pressed to my leg as though it could hide in the folds of my skirt. “I’m sorry, is this your room?” I asked as lightly as possible.

  “Why are you in here?” she asked.

  “Tricia asked me to get something for Aunt Cynthia and I guess I got the directions confused.”

  “You’re not a very good liar, Molly.”

  “Actually, I’m an excellent liar. I occasionally surprise myself. You just caught me unprepared. Good lies take time, don’t you find?”

  “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Are you planning to?”

  “Depends on what you tell me.”

  “Why should I tell you anything?”

  “Because I know what you did to Lisbet.”

  “Prove it.”

  A little voice in the back of my mind was screaming and encouraging my mouth to join in. But if I screamed now, there was too much of a chance that things would go awry. I was in her room without permission and holding a bottle that she might have already wiped her fingerprints off. Forget Regan Crawford, I was going to look like the nosy reporter mucking around where I didn’t belong.

  Rebecca grabbed my arm and pulled it away from my side. “What is that?” she asked, looking at the bottle.

  “So you’re a good liar, too.”

  “I’ve never seen that bottle before.”

  “Why else would it be in your satchel?”

  “Because you put it there. You’re planting evidence to make me look guilty because you promised my vicious little sister-in-law that you’d make sure David went free. And you’d do anything for that conniving little brat.”

  “I had no idea the two of you were so close.”

  Rebecca smiled. It was the most genuine expression I’d ever seen on her, but it still looked twisted and ill. “So what are you going to do, Molly?”

  “Take my chances.” I took a step past her, toward the door, but as I did so, she reached into the dresser drawer and brought out a small handgun. Now, I can pick out Jimmy Choos at twenty paces, but all I can tell you about this gun was that it was small and shiny and the ugliest thing I’d ever seen in my life.

  “Bad choice,” she said, pointing the gun at me. I stopped.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked, not anxious to be confrontational but not wanting to appear blase either.

  “I told you if you didn’t leave this alone, you were going to be next. I’ve always heard it’s easier the second time.”

  “That’s love, not murder,” I corrected her.

  “We’ll see.”

  The little voice suggested screaming again and I was starting to see the wisdom in that. It must have shown on my face, because Rebecca pulled me close, the gun nestled against my stomach. “Scream and I’ll shoot. I’ll say there was a struggle after I found you going through my things, planting the bottle and the gun.”

  “I withdraw my earlier assessment,” I said quietly. “You’re a fantastic liar.”

  “Thank you. Now you’re going to put the bottle back in the satchel and we’re going to take a walk. Throw a few things in the river.”

  “Like you threw Lisbet in the pool?”

  I was expecting her to be angry, but she was proud. “That slut was asking for it. And you know what, it was the smartest thing I’ve ever done. I was killing myself trying to get back in their good graces, but I kill her and all of a sudden, I’m the best daughter-in-law in the world. They rely on me, they trust me, they believe me. Punching that skank’s ticket wound up being my way back in.”

  “You killed Lisbet to get in good with the Vincents? I don’t follow.”

  “She said she was better than I was, that she didn’t have to follow their rules. I tried to go my own way and Richard threw me out. It was all about being a Vincent and what people thought and all that uptight WASP crap. I wasn’t good enough.”

  I wanted to ask how hard she could have been trying when she had wound up in the gossip columns and tabloids on a regular basis, but “That must have been so hard” seemed like a much wiser choice.

  “Ripped my heart out. So I decided, I’d beat them at their own game. I’d be a good girl. I had to beg Richard to take me back, but it was worth it. And then David hooks up with Lisbet, who’s not only a pig but a slut, and everybody falls all over her. She gets a big party and she gets to wear the emeralds and she makes a fool of herself and nobody bats an eye. I’m so furious I can’t sleep and I take a walk by the pool. Aunt Cynthia comes out of the pool house, all disgusted, tells me Lisbet’s in there, drunk as a skunk and whoring around. So I go in to talk to her. To warn her, share my experience. Lisbet says to mind my own business. No one’s going to tell her how to behave. Especially me.”

  I stared at her, chilled more by her matter-of-fact recitation of the facts than the facts themselves. She beamed. “Taught her, didn’t I?”

  “That was worth killing her?” I asked.

  “At the time, I was just furious. But it’s been incredibly worth it. I’m right where I want to be. Except now, you’re in the way.”

  Glued to my hip, she nudged me back to the armoire. “Pick it up,” she commanded, tossing her head toward the satchel. I obediently snagged it and placed the bottle back in its sweatshirt nest. I held it up for her, but she shook her head. “I have my hands full with you and the gun. You carry it.”

  She took my left arm like she was eight and I was her favorite friend, both arms wrapped around mine so her inner arm hid the gun from view, but not from use. It was pressed against my ribs, right by my heart. I was carrying the satchel in that hand, which made it awkward for us to walk, but gave her control over what I did with it, too. For a raving lunatic, she was pretty smart.

  She guided me back to the door. I understood her willingness to shoot me, but still, how did she think she was going to walk me through a foyer full of people and not have anyone notice we had become extraordinarily close?

  Because the foyer was empty. Everyone had gone in to be seated for the luncheon. Tricia had probably looked for me in Aunt Cynthia’s room and couldn’t figure out where I’d gone. Even if I risked screaming now, there was no guarantee in a monster apartment like this that anyone would hear me.

  “Rebecca, you’re just making it worse,” I attempted as we got closer to the foyer. “Stop now and we can work something out.”

  “I have everything worked out,” Rebecca insisted, getting strident. “You’re messing it up, but it’s going to be fine again, it’s going—”

  “Rebecca?”

  Mrs. Vincent entered the foyer in front of us. Rebecca and I stopped. I could feel the anger pulsing in her body and wondered if she could feel my joy.

  “Mrs. Vincent—” I began, but Rebecca pushed the gun more firmly against my side, so I stopped to carefully construct what I was going to say.

  “The soup’s getting cold. Where have the two of you been?”

  “Molly and I need to step out for a moment, Mother. We’ll be right back. Start without us.”

  “How is that going to look?” Mrs. Vincent asked. “It’s fine for Molly not to be there, but we’re making a statement of family unity and you’re spoiling it. Come to the table.”

  Rebecca propelled me forward. “I said, I’ll be right there.”

  “Rebecca, come to the table at once,” Mrs. Vincent repeated. Behind her, Richard and Mr. Vincent were moving into view as they came out of the dining room.

  “This is what you wanted, isn’t it, Rebecca?” I asked.

>   “Shut up, Molly.”

  “To be an indispensable member of the family?”

  “Rebecca, in. Now,” Mrs. Vincent commanded, imperious finger pointing the way. But Tricia, David, and Aunt Cynthia had come out now and the guests weren’t far behind, lured by the scent of trouble in the air.

  “Rebecca, explain yourself,” Mr. Vincent demanded.

  Rebecca was all but dragging me to the door now. Mr. Vincent and Richard were coming for us and, worried that innocent people—besides me—were about to get hurt, I knew I couldn’t hesitate any longer. I literally dragged my feet. As we walked past the round table and its rug, I dragged my right foot so the beautifully tapered heel on my shoe caught in the fringe. “Oh, wait!” I exclaimed, “I’m stuck.”

  It yanked us to a stop. Rebecca leaned to see where I was snagged and I did my plant-and-pivot move, shifting my weight with sufficient force to separate me, Rebecca, the gun, and the satchel and send us all tumbling to the floor.

  Screams filled the foyer as people saw the gun. Richard yelled for someone to call 911. Mr. Vincent yelled for calm. Mrs. Vincent yelled for Rebecca to behave herself. Tricia yelled for me to kick Rebecca’s ass and Cassady yelled for Tricia to say it again. Rebecca and I scrambled on our hands and knees after the gun. I grabbed it, but Rebecca got up on one knee and stomped on my hand with her stiletto heel. Even as I screamed, I tried to hang onto the gun, but my hand wasn’t responding and she yanked it away from me and got to her feet, waving the gun wildly and backing toward the front door.

  Richard stepped closer and she leveled the gun at him.

  “Don’t, Richard,” Mr. Vincent advised.

  I scooted myself back across the floor until I was close enough to snag the satchel. Rebecca was so focused on Richard that she didn’t notice at first; when she did glance down, I froze and she looked right back up at Richard.

  “This time, your father has good advice,” she told him. “Don’t mess with me right now, honey. I’ll explain it all later.”

  I slid my hand into the satchel and wrapped my hand around the neck of the bottle.