Party Crashers

by Stephanie Bond

  “Did you talk to anyone on the phone—cellular or otherwise?”

  “No.”

  “E-mail?”

  “No.”

  “Did you go anywhere?”

  “No.”

  “Then?”

  “Then Carlotta and Hannah came over, and we got ready for the party.”

  “You were aware that the party was being given by your former boss?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were intending to crash the party?”

  Jolie squirmed. “Yes.”

  “You didn’t know Mr. Hagan would be there?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Did Ms. Wren or Ms. Kizer know Mr. Hagan?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any idea why Mr. Hagan was at the party?”

  She lifted her hands. “No…unless he followed me there. As we walked into the house, Carlotta and I both saw a car sitting at the end of the driveway.”

  “Could you tell what kind of car it was?”

  Jolie shook her head.

  “Were you and your friends wearing disguises?”

  Jolie hesitated. “We were wearing wigs.”

  “And very expensive garments with the tags still attached—can you explain that?”

  She swallowed. “We…were planning to return them.”

  “I see. Are you in the habit of buying expensive clothes, wearing them, then returning them?”

  Jolie pursed her mouth. “I wouldn’t say it was a habit, per se.”

  “But you’ve done it before.”

  Jolie nodded.

  Salyers gave a little “the nerve” snort, then looked back to her notes. “Ms. Sanders said you were also wearing colored contact lenses.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And Ms. Wren said she altered your features with makeup.”

  “It’s true that I didn’t want Sammy to recognize me.”

  “Because she wouldn’t have wanted you at her party?”

  Jolie flushed. “That’s right.”

  “The two of you have a history. She said she fired you from her agency.”

  “That’s a lie—I quit.”

  “When was that?”

  “About three weeks ago.”

  “Why did you quit?”

  “Because…Sammy asked me to do something unethical.”

  “What was that?”

  Jolie sighed. “We were representing the seller in a commercial real-estate deal. She asked me to reveal to the buyer the amount the seller would settle for, which was much less than the asking price and confidential between the agency and the seller.”

  “And you refused?”

  “Yes. And I quit.”

  Salyers leaned back, tipping her chair on two legs. “Ms. Sanders said that you came to her party to rob her.”

  Jolie gasped. “What? That’s absurd!”

  “Is it? Ms. Sanders said that some items are missing, including one thousand dollars in cash from her purse. She also said that her medicine cabinet had been ransacked, and a sterling picture frame was taken.”

  And the picture frame had been found in her biggish purse at the bottom of the pool. Jolie closed her eyes and when she opened them, Salyers was still there, unfortunately.

  “Is there something you’d like to say, Ms. Goodman?”

  Jolie steepled her hands over her nose. “I put the picture frame in my purse because of the photo, not the frame.”

  Salyers arched an eyebrow. “I understood it was a photo of Ms. Sanders.”

  Jolie frowned at the implication. “It was a picture of Sammy, but the rock she was sitting on and the background reminded me of a photo in Gary’s album.” She lifted her hands. “I thought maybe Sammy was with him the day it was taken.”

  “Meaning you think Mr. Hagan and Ms. Sanders were romantically involved?”

  Jolie shrugged. “I don’t know, but it seemed like too big of a coincidence to ignore. I thought if I could take the photo out of the frame, I’d be able to compare the film processing date and the paper. I went into Sammy’s bathroom to remove the photo, but I couldn’t find anything to use as a screwdriver.”

  “So you were the one who ransacked the medicine cabinet?”

  Jolie nodded. “And the only thing I could find was a razor blade. It didn’t work and I cut myself.” She held up her re-bandaged hand.

  “You said that’s where the blood came from.”

  “The blood on my gown? Yes. Where is the photo now?”

  “Taken into evidence, I would assume.”

  “Then you can look into my theory?”

  Salyers gave her a skeptical look. “Sure. Okay, let’s back up. What about the money that’s missing?”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Ms. Sanders said you were aware that she normally carried a lot of cash.”

  “Anyone who knew Sammy well knew she carried cash.”

  “Did your friend Ms. Wren know?”

  Jolie remembered the conversation she’d had with Carlotta about the hush money Sammy was trying to give her. Her heart sank when she realized that lifting cash from Sammy’s purse would solve her friend’s financial dilemma. “I might have mentioned it.”

  “The money was found in the pool filter. You, Ms. Wren, Ms. Kizer, and Mr. Underwood were the only ones who took a swim.”

  “We fell in,” Jolie said.

  “Are you sure you didn’t jump in?”

  She frowned. “Why would I have jumped in?”

  Salyers shrugged. “Maybe you couldn’t live with yourself.”

  Jolie’s breath stuck in her throat. “You think I was trying to kill myself? That’s crazy!”

  “Or maybe you were trying to destroy evidence.”

  “I wasn’t,” Jolie said evenly.

  Salyers leaned forward, settling her chair on the floor. “Ms. Goodman, how well do you know Carlotta Wren and Hannah Kizer?”

  “Carlotta and I work together at Neiman’s. Hannah is a friend of Carlotta’s. I’ve known them for less than a week.”

  “So you really don’t know them that well, do you?’

  Jolie splayed her hands. “No, but they seem nice.”

  “Nice? They trespass for kicks. And the one with the pierced tongue, besides fooling around with a married man, looks like she’s into some pretty kinky stuff.”

  “You’d have to ask her.”

  “Have either of them ever mentioned owning a gun?”

  “No.” Then a memory surfaced, and she snapped her fingers. “But Sammy owns a gun. She was at Neiman’s yesterday and she paid for her purchase in cash.” Jolie decided not to mention the five-hundred-dollar tip that Sammy had offered on the chance it might lead to questions she’d rather not answer. “When she opened her purse, I saw a gun.”

  But Salyers seemed unfazed. “Ms. Sanders informed us that she has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, that she kept a nine-millimeter handgun in her purse, and that it’s missing. Do you know if the weapon you saw was a nine-millimeter?”

  “I couldn’t say—I’m not familiar with guns. Was that the kind of gun used to kill Gary?”

  “Officers are still on the scene searching for the murder weapon.”

  “Everyone at the party had access to Sammy’s gun,” Jolie said. “I saw the green purse sticking out from underneath her bed. I pushed it back.”

  “Does that mean we’ll find your fingerprints on the purse?”

  Jolie closed her eyes briefly, then nodded.

  “Did anyone see you push the purse underneath the bed?”

  Loath to implicate Beck, she hesitated, but she’d seen the police officers on the scene talking to him. “Beck Underwood was in the room.”

  Salyers’ eyebrow arched. “You and Mr. Underwood were in Ms. Sanders’ bedroom?”

  Her cheeks warmed. “We were taking a tour. Mr. Underwood had asked me to help him find a house—he was pointing out his likes and dislikes.”

  “Are you and Mr.
Underwood friends?”

  “Acquaintances,” she said.

  “No offense, Ms. Goodman, but how did you become acquainted with one of the richest men in Atlanta?”

  So it was obvious to everyone that they didn’t exactly move in the same circles. “I sold him a pair of shoes at Neiman’s, and our paths crossed again at a couple of parties.”

  “Parties that you and your friends crashed?”

  Jolie bit the end of her tongue, then nodded. “But I went to the parties looking for people who might know—have known—Gary.” Her voice caught and she inhaled deeply. “That’s when I ran into Roger LeMon.”

  “I see.”

  “He was at the party tonight,” Jolie said, sitting forward on the hard chair. “LeMon’s the one you should be questioning—he was probably the one who killed Gary.”

  Salyers nodded, but Jolie could tell the woman was only humoring her. “Why do you think that Mr. LeMon killed Mr. Hagan?”

  “Because Gary was set up. He didn’t kill that woman who was in his car.”

  The detective leaned forward on her elbows. “And how would you know that?”

  She swallowed. If she told the detective about talking to Gary Wednesday night in her car, she could be in even more trouble for not coming forward sooner.

  There was a rap on the door, then Salyers’ dark-haired partner stuck his head into the room. “Got a minute?” he asked Salyers.

  “Sure, Alexander.”

  He darted a worried look at Jolie that made her pulse pick up and handed a note to Salyers. After she read it, they had a murmured conversation, then he closed the door and left.

  Salyers walked back to the table, note in hand, working her mouth from side to side. “Ms. Goodman, you were wearing a long, blue all-weather coat, Montgomery Ward brand, size six, is that correct?”

  She nodded. “Did you find it?”

  “Sure did. And guess what was in the pocket?”

  Exhaustion was closing in. Jolie dragged her hands down her face. “Breath mints? Ticket stubs?”

  “Try the murder weapon.”

  Jolie’s mouth fell open. Tiny lights appeared behind her eyelids. A whining noise sounded in her ears.

  Salyers crossed her arms. “Ms. Goodman, what do you have to say for yourself?”

  That I’m gullible. “I…I m–might be needing that phone b–book after all.”

  Nineteen

  Detective Salyers slid two three-inch-thick volumes of the Atlanta Yellow Pages across the table, then handed Jolie a cordless phone. Jolie stared at it and wondered if they were afraid jailbirds would hang themselves with a phone cord. Which, under the circumstances, seemed a preferable way to meet one’s Maker than a needle in a vein.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Salyers said, then left the room.

  Jolie choked down her panic and gripped the phone so hard it made a popping sound. She had no idea how to go about choosing a criminal attorney—all the attorneys she knew represented irate buyers and sellers at mortgage closings. Generating enough paperwork to kill someone probably didn’t qualify as the kind of experience she needed.

  The L–Z volume had telltale curled pages near the beginning—countless other inmates had rifled through the “Legal Services” listings, which were handily categorized under “Attorneys, by Practice Area.” She ran her finger down the page: Bankruptcy (she’d probably need an attorney for that later), Corporate, Criminal. She scanned the listings and the ads. Names (singular and multi-partnered), pictures (from stern to smiling), and slogans (“If you’re in a jam, call Pam!”) ran together after a while. Jolie was secretly hoping to find an ad offering representation for the wrongly accused, but conceded that in this situation that had to be just about everybody.

  On the other hand, how many truly innocent people accumulated enough circumstantial evidence to incriminate themselves in a murder? Jolie had to admit that if she were the detective, she would arrest her.

  Knowing that time was running out, she narrowed the choices to office addresses that sounded affluent (Buckhead, downtown, anywhere on Peachtree Street), and had launched into the scientific elimination process of eenie, meenie, miney, moe when the door opened suddenly and Salyers stepped in. “That was quick,” she said to Jolie.

  Jolie frowned in confusion as a woman who looked amazingly like Barbara Bush, except she was wearing a nylon running suit instead of a blue dress and pearls, strode into the room. She set a big, black briefcase on the table, and turned to Salyers. “I’d like a few minutes alone with my client before questioning resumes.” Salyers nodded, then left.

  Still holding the phone, Jolie looked up at the woman. “I’m sorry—who are you?”

  “Pam Vanderpool.”

  Jolie squinted. “ ‘When you’re in a jam, call Pam’ Vanderpool?”

  The woman grinned. “That’s right. I’m your attorney, Ms. Goodman.”

  At a loss, Jolie shook her head. “How?”

  “We have a mutual friend—Beck Underwood.”

  Jolie’s eyes widened. “Beck called you?”

  The woman nodded and pulled out a steno pad. “We go way back, Beck and I.” With a rustle of nylon, she sat down in the seat Salyers had vacated. “Now, bring me up to speed. Tell me everything you told the police, and everything you didn’t.”

  Jolie tingled with wonder, gratitude, and concern that Beck would take it upon himself to help her. Pam Vanderpool had a stern, motherly quality that comforted.

  “I don’t know where to start,” Jolie stammered.

  The woman shrugged. “Start at the beginning. How are you acquainted with the deceased?”

  The deceased. Jolie’s chest ached and her eyes blurred with unexpected tears. “I didn’t kill Gary,” she murmured. “I’m innocent.”

  The woman reached across the table and patted Jolie’s arm. “I wish I could say that’s going to make my job easier, sweetheart, but it’s too early to tell.” She sighed. “You’re exhausted, so let’s get through this real quick-like, so you can go home.”

  Jolie gave her a brief background and repeated the conversations she’d had with the police, startling with when she’d first filed the missing persons report to her most recent tête-à-tête with Salyers. Vanderpool wrote furiously, asking questions here and there. Jolie ended with Salyers’ announcement that they’d found the murder weapon in her coat pocket.

  “Do you know how the gun might have gotten there?” the woman asked, looking eerily calm for someone defending a murder suspect.

  Jolie shook her head.

  “Have you ever fired a gun?”

  “No.”

  “And you have no inkling as to the identity of the woman found in Mr. Hagan’s car?”

  “That’s right.”

  Pam Vanderpool played with her pen, turning it end over end. “Ms. Goodman, if there’s anything you haven’t been truthful about with the police, I need to know now, so there aren’t any surprises.”

  Jolie swallowed hard and clasped her hands together. “Well, there’s this one little thing.”

  Vanderpool squinted. “What?”

  “Wednesday night when I left the party at the High Museum, Gary was waiting in my rental car.”

  The woman wet her lips. “And?”

  “And he told me not to go to the police, that if I did, both of our lives would be in danger.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “He said that he hadn’t killed the woman found in his car, that he’d been set up, but he wouldn’t tell me anything other than ‘they’ were out to get him, and if I went to the police, ‘they’ might come after me.”

  “Why would ‘they’ come after you?”

  “He said because of an envelope that he’d sent to me. When I told him I hadn’t received an envelope, he grew frantic and said ‘they’ must have intercepted it.”

  “Did he say what was in the envelope?”

  “No. He wouldn’t answer any of my questions about the dead woman or who he was afraid of.
He said the less I knew, the better. He wouldn’t even let me see his face.”

  “And you didn’t report this to the police?”

  She shook her head. “I convinced myself that he hadn’t said anything that would help them in their investigation and that I might actually make things worse.”

  The woman pursed her lips. “You still haven’t received this alleged envelope?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see Mr. Hagan again after that?”

  “No, not until…tonight.”

  “You didn’t see him at the party alive?”

  “N–no.”

  “Okay, well, since you withheld information, no polygraph for you, young lady, but I’m going to try to convince the police that arresting you right now wouldn’t be in anyone’s best interests.”

  Jolie swallowed. “Okay.”

  “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me before I call Detective Salyers back in?”

  “I…don’t have much money…to pay you.”

  The woman winked. “But Beck does.”

  Jolie sat in stunned silence while her prepaid attorney summoned Detective Salyers. “My client wishes to go home.”

  Salyers smiled, tapping a rolled sheath of papers against her palm. “We all wish to go home, Ms. Vanderpool, but there’s the little matter of a murder.”

  Vanderpool crossed her arms. “A man is shot at a party with dozens of people around—no one hears a thing. You’re not even sure that the victim was actually shot at the party, are you, Detective?”

  At Salyers’ hesitation, hope bloomed in Jolie’s chest.

  “We’re still waiting for the M.E.’s report,” Salyers said. “Meanwhile, we want Ms. Goodman to take a polygraph test.”

  “No,” Vanderpool said bluntly. “But my client is willing to submit to a gunpowder residue test.”

  Jolie’s eyes widened. She was?

  Salyers’ mouth quirked to the side. “Your client took a swim in a pool. Any gun powder residue on her person or her clothes was washed away.”

  Vanderpool lifted her arms. “Then you got nothing.”

  “We have the murder weapon in Ms. Goodman’s coat pocket.”

  “Which anyone could have placed there. Besides, if my client were guilty, why wouldn’t she simply have left the party rather than raising an alarm?”

  “Maybe she panicked.”