How to Crash a Killer Bash (14 page)

Brad, on the other hand, was in his element. He took the corners at an angle, whipped through traffic lanes as if the other cars were standing still, and occasionally revved the loud motor more than he really needed to.

“Show-off,” I yelled, when we pulled into a parking space at the de Young, my ears still buzzing from the noise. I yanked off the bug-spattered helmet and tried to fluff my hair.

“You loved it,” Brad said, ruffling his own hair, which fell into place perfectly. I unzipped the black jacket he’d lent me—a woman’s jacket—and handed it to him. He stuffed it, along with his own, into a side compartment, locked them up, then secured the two helmets to the handlebars—if that’s what you call them—with a bike lock.

“Lead the way,” he said, gesturing toward the museum entrance.

I marched ahead, held open my purse, and passed through the security checkpoint easily, in spite of the bag of deflated balloons I always carried with me.

“So where do you think Delicia’s purse is?” he asked, trailing my quick step.

“I’m hoping it’s still in the changing room, off the mural room. That’s where everyone stored their stuff during the play.”

We stepped into the mural/crime scene room. Empty. I walked over to the far door that led to the small anteroom and tried the knob. The door opened. I stepped in, crossing my fingers Dee’s purse would still be there.

That room was also empty.

I stepped out and looked at Brad, unable to hide the disappointment on my face.

“Try lost and found,” he said.

I perked up. “Great idea.” When he didn’t follow me out of the mural room, I asked, “Aren’t you coming?”

He shook his head. “I’ll stay here and have another look around.”

“For the weapon?”

“That too.”

“If you’re still trying to figure out how the killer got in, it had to be through that side door. And it was locked, remember? The killer had to have had a key.”

“True, but it wasn’t locked just now, when you went in to look for the purse.”

He was right—that was odd.

“Okay, I’ll be right back,” I said. “Would you keep an eye on this?” I handed him my knockoff bag.

He frowned as he took it. “This really isn’t my color,” he said, holding it out as if it were filled with toxic waste.

I laughed, then headed for the front desk. The docent there directed me to the security office where they kept the lost and found articles, tucked downstairs in the basement.

“Can I get there without a passkey?”

“Oh yes. The security office is always accessible.”

I rode the elevator to the basement and, when the doors opened, stepped out into a dimly lit hallway. The office was located directly across from the elevators. I rapped on the door and waited only seconds before it opened.

“Yes?” said the uniformed man. He was probably in his seventies, with salt-and-pepper hair and glasses. Surely this was a part-time, semiretirement job for him. His nametag read “Ed Pike.”

“Uh, hi. I, uh, left my purse here last night, in that little room off the mural room. I wondered if you’d found it. The volunteer at the desk directed me here.”

His chest puffed up, and he put on his hat, which he’d been holding in his hand. “What’s it look like?”

I knew Dee’s purse well. It was easy to describe in a nutshell. “It’s beaded, about the size of a lunch pail, with Cinderella on the front.”

He nodded, closed the door, and reappeared a few minutes later with a small bag covered in rhinestones, the Disney princess prominently featured. It fit Dee to a tee.

Thank God it hadn’t been confiscated by the police.

I reached for it. He pulled it back.

“Got any ID?”

Think fast, Presley, I told myself. “Uh, my ID is in my purse.” I pointed to the bag.

He opened the purse, pulled out Dee’s wallet, and looked at the picture on her driver’s license. “Don’t look like you,” he said, glancing back and forth between me and Dee’s picture. We were both dark-haired, but that’s where the resemblance ended.

“I know. I was so sick that day, and my hair was long back then, and I had colored contacts . . .” I rambled on. The frown deepened. I tried another tack. “Check my birthday. It’s June seventeenth, 1980.” As a party hostess, I knew a lot of my friends’ birthdays, including Dee’s. “And inside you’ll find my car keys attached to Tinkerbelle.”

He eyed me suspiciously; although I could see the keys in his hand, he wasn’t going to relinquish the purse easily.

“Listen, is Sam Wo here? He knows me.”

The guard turned around and yelled Sam’s name. Seconds later, a familiar face appeared. He grinned when he recognized me. “Ms. Parker! Nice to see you again.”

The other guard frowned at me. “I thought you said your name was—”

I cut him off. “Sam, my friend Delicia left her purse here last night. I was just trying to get it back for her. I thought—”

“Give it to her,” he commanded Ed Pike.

To my surprise, Pike handed it over, although with a protesting grunt. “Try not to lose it again,” he grumbled, and disappeared inside.

“Thanks, Sam. Once again, you’re a lifesaver.”

His face flushed magenta, and he smiled sheepishly. “How’s it going for your friend?”

I filled him in on the latest, which wasn’t much. “Have you heard anything more?” I asked, figuring if anyone was in on the museum gossip, a security guard would be the one.

His bright smile fell. “Not really. Everyone here thinks your friend did it. They all heard about the big fight. And they knew about Ms. Miller’s attempts to stop Corbin from seeing the girl.”

“Was there anyone else having a problem with Mary Lee lately?”

His eyes narrowed. There was something Sam wasn’t telling me.

“Sam?”

He looked at his watch. “I gotta get back to work. Maybe later?”

“Sure,” I said, then thanked him for Dee’s purse and headed back to the elevator. I pushed the button for the main floor and returned to the scene of the crime.

“I got it!” I said to Brad, holding up the princess bag.

He nodded distractedly, as if he hadn’t heard me.

“Are you listening?”

“Look at this.” Brad waved me over to the side door where he stood.

“What? I told you, that door was locked after Dee entered. She was the last one in here.”

“But like you said, maybe someone had a key. Who else would have that type of key?”

“The security guards, I assume.”

“And perhaps the staff? Including Mary Lee herself.”

“I . . . suppose. Did they find a key on her . . . body? And what would that prove anyway?”

“That Delicia wasn’t the only one who had access.”

He was onto something. “Then we’ll have to find out who among the staff also had access to this room,” I said, stating the obvious. “That could be quite a list. Besides, someone could have just reached in and turned the lock before shutting the door.”

He took my hand and pulled me over a few steps. “Stand here.” He turned me around so I faced the interior of the room, with my back to the anteroom door.

“What?” I said.

He glanced up at the camera in the corner. A yellow light was lit up.

“It’s motion activated,” I said. “The security guard told me.”

He smiled at me, waiting for me to read his mind.

Seconds later I did. “There must be videotapes!”

“Yep. Melvin’s already reviewing them. I’ll see if he saw anything, but with everyone in costume, that might be a problem.”

“Brad, I have to see those tapes—”

The thud of heavy, running footsteps and shouts from outside the room cut me off. We dashed to the front entry. I spotted Sam Wo rushing past, with Ed Pike following him to the exit doors. Their faces were tight and earnest.

“Sam!” I yelled after him. “What’s going on?”

He dashed out of sight.

I glanced at Brad, then ran after Sam, with Brad at my heels. Following the shouts and footfalls, I sped out the main entrance and around to the gardens to a circular frog pond. By the time we caught up, Sam, Ed, and a female guard were pulling at something heavy that was caught in a thicket of reeds in the middle of the pond.

It only took a second to realize what it was.

A human leg.

Brad and I sat in the museum café sipping lattes—his as stimulant, mine as sedative—waiting to talk with Detective Melvin. At the moment, the detective sat at another table talking with Sam Wo, Ed Pike, and another security guard, the African-American woman I’d seen earlier. Apparently she’d been the one who’d discovered the leg protruding from the pond and called the others.

The leg was attached to a body.

Whose body remained a mystery.

After dismissing the two guards, Detective Melvin sauntered over, interrupting our attempts to come up with possible suspects. So far I’d listed Christine Lampe, Jason Cosetti, and his son, Corbin, if I didn’t count the two hundred plus party guests.

“I need a coffee. You two want anything?” Melvin said, being uncharacteristically thoughtful.

Brad shook his head; I held up my coffee mug to indicate I had plenty. The detective strolled over to the counter and returned with a coffee and a slice of chocolate cake. Brushing imaginary crumbs from the arty metallic chair, he sat down.

I shifted uncomfortably in my hard, cold chair.

“What’s up?” Brad said to Melvin while I sipped my latte.

Detective Melvin leaned back and stretched his lanky legs under the table. Even during a murder investigation, he looked impeccable. “Dead man in a frog pond,” he said simply.

“Wow, you cops are sharp,” I said, hoping my voice dripped with sarcasm. I couldn’t help myself.

He tossed me a smirky smile and took a big bite of the four-layer, triple-chocolate cake. I felt my mouth watering at the sight of the thick, rich icing.

“Any ID?” Brad asked.

“Nope. No wallet, nothing.”

“Any idea when he died? Or how?”

Melvin shook his head. Not a hair moved. “Looks like he hadn’t been in the water long. No blistering, skin slippage, that sort of thing.”

Yuck.

Melvin continued. “ME thinks he drowned. Had a pretty deep contusion on the back of his head. He may have been knocked out, then dragged to the pond after the blow. We’ll know more after the autopsy.”

“So it’s murder, right?” I tossed out.

Detective Melvin shot me a look, then stabbed another piece of his cake.

I pressed on. “Either that or he bumped the back of his head on something hard, then staggered over to the frog pond, jumped into the cattails, and drowned.” Sarcasm and facetiousness are two of my best traits. Why waste them?

Brad put a hand on my wrist, like a parent shushing an errant child. I snatched my arm away and took another sip of my calming latte, hoping to stem my ire. Didn’t help.

“No one around here recognized him?”

Melvin downed another bite of cake, then glanced up at me and licked his lips. He was torturing me with the cake, and he knew it. I only hoped I wasn’t openly drooling.

“Not yet. Face was puffy, discolored.”

On second thought, the idea of eating anything at this point made me want to upchuck.

“Think it’s related to Mary Lee’s murder?” Brad asked.

“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Melvin said.

I sat up. “What kind of shoes was he wearing?”

The detective’s next forkful of cake froze midway to his mouth. “Shoes?”

“She’s got some kind of shoe fetish,” Brad explained, with a smirk.

I slapped his arm. “I do not! I have a master’s degree in abnormal psychology, and I happen to know that shoes tell a lot about a person.”

Detective Melvin stuck a foot out from under the table and wiggled it. “Yeah? So what do my shoes tell you?”

I raised an eyebrow at his large feet. “You sure you want to know?”

“Bring it on.”

“Well, they’re Rockports, so you have good taste.”
You spend too much on shoes
. “You appreciate quality.”
You’re covering a slight inferiority complex.
“You hope to make police chief someday.”
You think you’re smarter than you are.

“Huh.” He grinned at my superficial analysis, apparently pleased, and clueless that I was holding back lots more. “Okay, the dead guy was wearing Birkenstocks.”

Birks? That said artist, bohemian, or hippie.

“Authentic or knockoffs?”

“How would I know?”

“Sock or no socks?” I continued.

“No socks.”