Fanny Packs and Foul Play (A Haley Randolph Mystery) (4 page)

“One does not expect staff to remain on the
premises following an event of this nature,” she said in an
if-you-had-any-class-you’d-know-that voice.

“We don’t need a staff,” Cassie said. “We can
take care of ourselves.”

“We sure can,” Renée agreed.

I thought Julia might actually morph into a
block of ice at any second.

“I’ll help out,” Andrea offered.

Julia turned her how-dare-you glare Andrea’s
way, so what could I do but say, “And so will I.”

“Good,” Melanie said. “It’s all settled.”

Julia’s pinched lips indicated that the
matter was far from settled, yet good breeding forbade her from
pressing the issue.

“Very well,” she said and left.

No way was I staying in that room any longer.
If the cops wanted to talk to me, they’d just have to hunt me
down.

I left and walked down the hallway heading
for the front door—and spotted Julia.

Crap.

She walked over, her
I-could-pass-for-a-wax-figure composure once again firmly in
place.

“I realize my comments may have sounded
cold,” she said, sounding, of course, incredibly cold, “but I hope
you could see that I was attempting to soften the blow.”

I had no idea what she was talking about.

“What blow?” I asked.

“The heartache they will endure when the
police reveal that Veronica killed herself,” she said.

Oh my God, where had that come from?

“She was an impetuous girl, unfortunately,”
Julia said. “She didn’t think things through. Things such as
leaving her home and her family, marrying my Patrick, attempting to
assist in the running of a major business venture. She was in over
her head here. She was glad her relatives were coming because she
intended to go back home with them.”

Okay, I was thoroughly shocked.

“But she and Patrick seemed like they were so
much in love,” I said.

Julia dismissed my words with a graceful
flick of her wrist.

“She confided in me,” Julia said.

Wow, had I misjudged Veronica’s relationship
with her mother-in-law, or what?

“But now her aunts and cousin will be here to
personally witness the horrifying truth when it’s revealed,” Julia
said, and left the thanks-to-you-and-Andrea unspoken yet heavily
implied.

“I can’t imagine Veronica taking her own
life,” I said.

“How could it be anything else?” Julia said.
“Even someone so utterly lacking in poise and grace as Veronica
wasn’t clumsy enough to fall off of a balcony.”

When I walked
into the L.A. Affairs office the next morning, Mindy was on the
phone jabbing buttons on the console as if she were sitting in
front of a video poker machine in Vegas—and looked as frazzled and
desperate as a weekend gambler on an all-night losing streak. This
didn’t make me feel so good about myself.

It was a stretch for me to have patience with
Mindy, even under the best of conditions and, really, conditions
hadn’t been all that great for me lately.

Marcie had told me I’d been kind of crabby
and I realized that, as always, she was right—and that no matter
how difficult my life had seemed to me lately, it was a heck of a
lot better than Veronica’s, Patrick’s, and their families’.

I decided I should definitely stop acting
like such a crab-ass and be nicer.

“Are you ready to party?” Mindy asked, as the
lights on her telephone blinked frantically and she held the
received away from her ear.

“Yes, I am,” I told her, then smiled and went
on my way.

I swung by my office and dropped off my
handbag—an adorable Chanel tote that perfectly complemented my gray
checked pencil skirt and white sweater—and went to the breakroom.
Several employees were in there making themselves a cup of coffee,
and chatting.

Kayla, my L.A. Affairs BFF who was also an
event planner, was heating a muffin in the microwave. She was about
my age, tall, with dark hair and a curvy figure.

“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” she
asked.

Okay, this wasn’t the best topic for me to
discuss so early in the morning—I mean, jeez, I hadn’t even had my
first cup of coffee yet—especially on the heels of my decision to
be a nicer person. Kayla had no way of knowing that, of course. The
what-are-you-doing question prior to any holiday was standard among
friends and acquaintances.

“My mom is having the family over,” I
said.

Really, I wasn’t sure exactly what Mom had in
mind for the day or who she planned to invite—except for some
unsuspecting guy who was destined to be set up with my sister. Mom
had probably told me the details but I’d drifted off.

“What about you?” I asked, as I got a cup
from the cabinet.

“Everybody is going to my aunt’s this year,”
Kayla said. “I have to be at a client’s house until mid-afternoon,
so the family is holding dinner until I get there.”

Wow, that was nice. I had no idea what time
Mom was serving but I was pretty sure it would have nothing to do
with my schedule—more likely the time that she’d assigned to the
caterer she’d hired.

“See you later,” Kayla said. She grabbed her
muffin and coffee, and left.

I filled my cup, added a few sugars and a
generous splash of French vanilla creamer, and headed out. At the
door I turned back, grabbed two bags of M&Ms from the snack
cabinet, and went to my office.

I settled into my desk, sipped my coffee, and
got down to work. First things first, was my policy when starting a
new day, so I immediately updated my Facebook page, checked my bank
balance, and read my horoscope. I was debating whether to look at
the Neiman Marcus or the Nordstrom’s web sites for an
if-I-don’t-find-one-soon-I’ll-die handbag when I noticed three
phone messages from the day before, all from the same person,
someone named Mr. Douglas.

Huh. That was weird. I wasn’t handling an
event for anyone by that name.

Then it hit me—that was the guy who’d called
yesterday wanting an immediate appointment with me to, no doubt,
talk about an event for his wife or girlfriend. I’d told Mindy to
get rid of him, but he’d called back several more times, it
seemed.

Why the heck did he keep calling? Didn’t he
get the hint?

Yeah, okay, I’d decided just a short while
ago to be a nicer person, but that didn’t necessarily include
spending weeks or months putting together a fabulous occasion for a
man desperately in love with someone who wasn’t me.

Veronica and Patrick Spencer-Taft flashed in
my mind. During the occasions when I’d worked with them prepping
the Thanksgiving feast I could see how much they loved each other.
And beyond that, they made a great team working side by side at
Pammy Candy.

Then an ugly image flashed in my mind.
Veronica, distraught and desperate, standing at the glass sliding
doors in the master suite of that beautiful mansion, then charging
across the balcony, hurling herself over the railing.

Could she really have done that? Could she
have killed herself, as Julia had said?

True, Veronica’s life had taken a major turn,
and I could see where she might have been overwhelmed by the move,
the new house, the business, new friends and family. Trying to fit
in when her background was so different wouldn’t have been
easy.

Could Andrea, as Veronica’s personal
assistant, been so wrong about her and her relationship with
Patrick? Was Julia right and she had been planning to go back home
with her family, leave Patrick and everything they’d built? Had
Veronica been too unhappy and upset to tell Patrick how she
felt?

I didn’t like any of those thoughts or images
swirling around in my head, so I pushed them out. They might be for
nothing, anyway, once the police completed their investigation.
Maybe it had been a horrible accident, after all.

No matter what, I figured the Thanksgiving
Day feast I’d been putting together for the employees of Pammy
Candy was off. Maybe Patrick would want me to plan a memorial
service instead.

Not a great feeling.

My office phone rang. Mindy was calling. I
mentally repeated my be-nicer vow and answered.

“Hello? Hello? Is this the accounting
department?” Mindy asked.

“No, it’s not,” I said—pleasantly, under the
circumstances.

“Haley, is that you?” Mindy giggled. “Oh,
jiminy, are you in accounting now?”

“No,” I said.

“That’s too bad,” Mindy said. “You’d make a
terrific accountant.”

Good grief.

“Bye, Mindy,” I said.

“Oh, wait,” she said. “Haley, you have a
call—no, you have a client. Yes, client. A client who called, then
came by—no, a client who came by, then called—”

I hung up—which was the nicest thing I could
do.

I had no idea if a client was in the office
or on the phone, so I sat there for a minute in case Mindy
transferred a call. She didn’t, but given her prowess with our
phone system—thank God she wasn’t working in a missile silo—that
didn’t necessarily mean anything.

I gave it a couple more minutes, then decided
there was a real possibility that a client of mine had showed up
without an appointment and was waiting for me in one of the
interview rooms. I grabbed a new event portfolio from my desk
drawer—I always look smart when I carry it—and headed down the
hallway.

All the interview rooms were empty, except
one, and—oh my God, who was that guy?

I froze in the doorway. I couldn’t move,
couldn’t think. My heart raced and I felt all jittery inside.

The man seated in front of the desk was
handsome—I mean, really handsome. His hair was somewhere between
light brown and blonde, combed carefully into place. He had on a
very expensive dark suit, a snowy white shirt, and a gray necktie.
Even seated I could see he was tall and that he worked out
regularly. I figured him for early thirties.

He spotted me and rose from his chair. “Miss
Randolph?”

Oh my God, he had the most gorgeous green
eyes I’d ever seen in my entire life.

I fought off the I’m-fifteen-again urge to
giggle, play with my hair, and act like a complete idiot—not easy,
but I pulled it off.

Oh, please, let me have pulled that off.

“Yes,” I said, and walked into the room.

He extended his hand and we shook—and all
sorts of crazy heat raced up my arm.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “I’m
Liam Douglas.”

Oh my God, he had a fabulous name. He was
tall and sturdy, but long limbed and athletic, like he could morph
into a Marvel superhero at any moment.

“I’m glad I could finally catch you,” he
said.

Catch me? What the heck was he talking about?
Why would he—

Oh, crap.

He was the Mr. Douglas who’d been calling—and
I’d been avoiding like the zombie apocalypse—and now he’d showed up
here at the office. I’d suspected he wanted me to stage an event
for his wife or girlfriend—men never come in here for any other
reason—and now I knew I’d been right.

To make matters worse he was really hot
looking, so his girlfriend was probably gorgeous. They, no doubt,
had a fabulous life and were going someplace romantic for
Thanksgiving—not stuck at their mom’s house with boring relatives
and probably friends they didn’t even know, like I was.

How the heck was I supposed to be a nicer
person when these annoying things kept happening?

I channeled my pageant-mom’s
I-can-look-pleasant-even-though-that-ugly-girl-on-the-end-won-first-place,
and said, “I’ll have one of our other planners help with your
event, Mr. Douglas. I can’t take on another client right now.”

“I’m not a client,” he said. “I’m an attorney
and I need to speak with you.”

Yikes! Was I being sued?

My entire life flashed through my head. Had I
done something suit-worthy? Well, yeah, probably—but I was sure I’d
covered all of that up really well.

Then Veronica Spencer-Taft flew into my mind.
Was this something to do with her death?

“I’m with the firm of Schrader, Vaughn, and
Pickett,” Liam explained. “We represent L.A. Affairs.”

Oh, crap.

“Let’s sit down,” Liam said.

I took the power seat behind the desk and he
returned to the visitor’s chair in front of it. He was definitely
in attorney-mode, serious and grim—which was kind of hot—as he took
his cell phone from the pocket of his jacket and pushed a few
buttons.

“A suit has been brought against L.A. Affairs
by one of your clients,” he said, consulting his phone. He looked
up at me. “It’s alleged that an assault took place at the
event.”

An assault?

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“A sexual assault,” Liam said.

Oh my God, how horrible. I sank back in my
chair, stunned and repulsed.

Something like that had happened at an event
I’d planned? Had I missed the need for sufficient security? Was
there something I could have done to prevent such a heinous
act?

Liam consulted his notes on his cell phone
again. “This occurred approximately one month ago. Do you recall
the event?”

“I have no idea,” I told him. “No idea at
all. I didn’t know anything like this took place. Why didn’t anyone
say something sooner?”

“The pregnancy was only recently discovered,”
Liam said.

I felt ill—like I might really be sick.

“Do you have notes on the event that you
could consult?” Liam asked.

“Of course. Anything I can do to help,” I
said. “What was the occasion? Whose event was it?”

He glanced at his cell phone again. “It was a
birthday party at the client’s home in Pasadena, hosted by Fritz
Amos and Max Sheldon. Do you recognize those names?”

The event sprang into my head
immediately.

“Sure, they were two really nice guys,” I
said, as the details of the party formed in my head. “But it was
all men. No women. And it wasn’t some wild occasion. It was an
afternoon birthday party for their—”