Mystery Night Murder Page 2

  The only thing Soo Jin was able to do was apply makeup and do my hair. My normally unruly, short dirty blonde hair had been curled into sleek waves away from my face and with the bloodred lipstick, mascara, and rouge, made me look completely different.

  "I think you look amazing!" Stacey said. "You should wear your hair like that all the time."

  I scowled at my reflection. Seemed like a lot of work.

  "Okay, everyone! The guests are getting settled in the parlor with cocktails. Does everyone remember their parts?"

  The girls nodded solemnly. Dr. Body giggled. I grudgingly shrugged, and Juliette disemboweled woodland creatures with her gaze. Okay, that didn't really happen. But in an alternate dimension, several chipmunks exploded.

  Stacey and Juliette left the room, and I looked back at the mirror. Actually, it wasn't bad. Except for the ginormous twenty-pound circle of heavy fabric around my waist, I looked okay. Stacey was right about the hair. How Soo Jin smoothed and styled it in a few minutes was beyond me. I probably shouldn't have kept my eyes closed the whole time.

  The Girl Scout Council staff was part of the show, as Soo Jin, me, and the girls were. The idea was that the guests were invited to a mysterious party in a house where it turned out the host wasn't present.

  There was a housekeeper who cooked and a groundskeeper too. These were played by the actual housekeeper, Miriam Cooper, and actual groundskeeper, Ned Odom. We hadn't had much time to get to know these two, but they were a bit standoffish while we were getting ready. If I had to guess, I'd say they weren't very happy about participating. I wondered how the Deivers had convinced them.

  Miriam was maybe in her mid-thirties and seemed normal, just quiet. So quiet that she spoke in a smaller font. Ned, on the other hand, was maybe sixty years old and scary. At six feet, eight inches, he towered (and glowered) over all of us. If I hadn't already memorized the mystery, I'd say he did it.

  Stacey and Juliette were playing the parts of two socialite sisters who were also invited. They weren't the victims or the killer but a kind of buffer between us and the guests. Soo Jin and I were playing to type as the leaders of a stranded group of Girl Scouts taking shelter from a raging storm during a failed canoe trip gone wrong. Why the two of us were wearing skirts on a canoe trip had never been explained to us.

  And that was it. The guests, whom we were just about to meet, were the real players. We found our way to the lounge—a very large room with four couches, a fireplace, and many chairs. In the middle of the room was a small round table with a large silver tray on top.

  "The figurines!" I rolled my eyes. "We forgot them!"

  Linda Willard had modelled the event on the Agatha Christie novel, and in the book, as each victim was killed off, a figurine was found smashed. We'd been talking about it for weeks, but I'd totally spaced. Would the guests notice?

  Betty and Inez ran from the room and were back before we could yell at them. Betty set a box on the table, and Inez pulled out a very interesting sort of clay rabbit.

  "We made these!" the girl said proudly.

  One by one, the girls pulled eight Picasso-like attempts at woodland creatures (although I could swear one looked like a hippo) out of the box and set them up in a ring around the tray.

  "These are wonderful!" Stacey cried out as she bent close to inspect them. "You girls took the initiative and made these! Good job!"

  "All four of us did!" Ava said quickly.

  I reached for a disturbingly mutated pigeon, but Betty slapped my arm away. "Leave the squirrel alone," she said.

  Squirrel? "They're not exactly dry. How are we going to smash them if they're not smashable?" I asked.

  Lauren thought about this for a moment. "We could tear their heads off," she suggested.

  Voices came from the front entrance, and we took our places, with Betty shoving the box behind one of the couches. The girls were seated cross-legged on the floor, with Soo Jin and me in chairs behind them.

  Stacey stayed with us, while Juliette was greeting the guests. That seemed like having a spider greet flies before eating them. But maybe she was just pure unadulterated evil to me and me alone.

  The first to walk into the room was Dennis Blunt. Last week, I'd done my homework and looked up all the donors. Dennis was a sullen rich kid who'd never had to work a day in his life. He'd barely scraped through college, majoring in a degree of his own invention (or rather, based on his parents' generous donation to the school) in video gaming.

  If I had to guess, I'd say he was in his early thirties, but it was clear he was embracing a slovenly, slacker image, wearing a black T-shirt with some metal band on it, ripped jeans, and high-top sneakers. His hair was too long to be short and too short to be long, as if he'd found the one hairdresser who could do I-don't-care hair. He looked homeless, not wealthy. But his parents hadn't been able to come at the last minute, so he was their stand-in. Which explained why he wasn't in costume.

  Dennis rolled his eyes and sighed heavily as he slunk over to an overstuffed chair and fell into it with a loud groan. He didn't even look at the rest of us, acting as if we weren't even there.

  "Idiot," Betty mumbled under her breath.

  Thad and Wren Gable were the next through the doorway. A young professional, Thad was well known as one of the leading defense lawyers in the state. Nefariously known. Thad loved making waves, defending some of the worst criminals in Iowa, including the notorious Vy Todd—a convicted smuggler whose path I'd crossed not too long ago.

  Thad had a reputation for cheating on his wife, at times openly. His current paramour was going to be here as well. I wasn't sure how that was going to go down. Maybe there'd be a real murder after all.

  "Oh." He made a face as he saw the girls. "There are children here." The emphasis invoked images of a roach infestation in a sewage lagoon.

  Soo Jin put her hand on my arm, probably anticipating I'd say or do something. I relaxed. These folks had given a lot of money to be here. The least I could do was not kill them before they were killed in the game. I made a mental note to have a little chat about respect with him later. A long chat that included death threats.

  Wren Gable looked at the girls anxiously. "Oh! Well! I guess this is a Girl Scout event, Thad," she jittered as she fiddled with some period bangles on her wrist.

  Dressed as a well-to-do couple from the '50s, Thad wore a three-piece suit, while Wren was dressed in a dull gray with matching pumps and purse. She tugged nervously on her gloves. Wren was the very definition of a mousy wife. According to my research, no one believed that she was completely clueless about Thad's wandering eye. And yet she never left the man…never even threatened such a thing. Maybe I should have a chat with her too. A long chat with instructions on waterboarding your husband.

  Without wasting any more time, Thad breezed past to the liquor tray and poured himself a glass of what looked to be whiskey. Wren fluttered near him as if waiting for permission to sit.

  "These may not be the best role models for the girls," I whispered to Soo Jin.

  "We can use this as a teaching moment then," she said brightly.

  Right. Girls, don't be like Wren, and don't marry a Thad. And never, ever date a Dennis. That summed things up.

  A grim-looking middle-aged woman entered the room, wearing an unfortunately fitted black dress, ballet flats, and a frown. With short hair and a serious gaze, Dr. Caroline Regent looked like she'd much rather be elbow deep in a patient's intestines. The woman had a brilliant reputation as a surgeon but turned out to be a social dud. My research indicated that, from time to time, she attended galas, but they weren't really her thing, and she rarely talked to anyone.

  Dr. Regent had recently pioneered an experimental bowel bypass using snakeskin, making a name for herself nationwide. Unlike Thad, who liked the publicity, Caroline ignored it and spent almost all her time in surgery. I couldn't help but wonder why she was even here.

  "Oh! Arthur! Look at the little girls!" An elderly woman with a warm grin came through the door with an equally elderly man.

  "This is great!" Arthur smiled at my troop. "I love being around children!"

  Arthur and Violet Kasinski were in their late 70s and came from old money. Arthur's grandfather was the first pork producer in the area, a long time ago, and Arthur had built a vast fortune in the hog industry.

  The couple were famous for their love of children and were thought to be the nicest people in Iowa. Legendarily generous, the couple had never been able to have kids of their own, so they gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to charities like the Girl Scouts and Boys & Girls of Iowa, among other groups. The two of them were known to be very much in love, still doting on each other like they had when they'd first married. They were the couple everyone wanted to grow up to be.

  Arthur and Violet came right over and introduced themselves, asking each girl her name and being delighted by the answer. Arthur rewarded each girl with a cellophane-wrapped butterscotch disk. The girls politely thanked him but didn't seem very sure about what it was. I'd be willing to bet they'd never seen hard candy before. I gave them a quick nod. Betty unwrapped the candy and popped it into her mouth. The smile on her face told the other girls the candy was okay.

  Soo Jin and I introduced ourselves last.

  "You are so lucky." Violet beamed. "To get to work with kids! I wish I were younger—I'd be a Scout leader every year."

  I wanted to say that they might rethink that if they had my troop, but Soo Jin beat me to the punch with a sweet thank-you.

  Arthur then reached into his pocket and handed each girl a candy bar. This was familiar territory, and the girls tore into them, thanking them through mouthfuls of chocolate, which amused the older couple and horrified the Gables.

  Dennis still hadn't acknow
ledged the fact that there were others in the room.

  The last two people through the door, weren't a couple at all. Taylor Burke was forty, just making Iowa's 40 Under 40 last year before aging out of the award. Petite and imposing, Taylor was the first female CEO of a major insurance company, headquartered in Des Moines. Known to be sharp and very ambitious, she was often called the Dragon Lady of Double Indemnity (whatever that meant). I liked what I'd read about her, especially the part where she'd been a Bronze, Silver, and Gold Award winner when she was a Girl Scout. The only reservation I had was that Taylor was rumored to be Thad's latest fling.

  "This is nice," she said as she took in the room, wearing a very red, very expensive vintage designer coat dress. After spotting the girls, she grinned. "And we have real Girl Scouts!" The woman bent down to Betty. "You know what? I was once a Girl Scout too! The youngest Gold Award winner in the state of Iowa."

  She said it in a way that complimented herself while insulting us. It was all in her inflection. Most people don't realize how dangerous that can be. In my experience, you had to be careful who you passive-aggressively complimented. You might get away with it with most people, but occasionally you came across a paranoid Lithuanian strongman who thought "have a nice day" was an invitation to a firefight. That's when you're glad you chose to attend his garden party armed with a very, very large handgun. I escaped only because his pet wolf distracted everyone by coughing up a human femur.

  Betty must have been suspicious of Taylor's words, because she gave me a cautious look. I nodded, indicating it was okay to respond.

  "Okay," the girl said, unimpressed.

  Ava, my somewhat bossier Scout, piped up, "That's what I want to be! I want to be the youngest Gold Award winner in the US."

  For a split second, a look of annoyance marred Taylor's carefully made-up features, but it disappeared, and she patted the child on the head. "Good luck!"

  Clearly, the woman did not like the idea of her record being broken. I decided right then and there that Ava was going to make that happen, if it took all my resources and a couple of well-placed bribes.

  "Thad!" Taylor purred when she saw him and made her way to join the Gables at the drinks table.

  The man who'd walked in with her had stopped in the doorway and looked around. Enos McQuaid was a bored billionaire and my vote for wild card at the event. Dressed in a work shirt like you'd see at a gas station fifty years ago, the guy seemed to be thumbing his nose at the stylish folks around him.

  McQuaid became rich during college when he invented Clean Yo Mouth—a cell phone app that reminded people to brush their teeth. He sold it for millions and then joined the leisure set.

  Word on the street said that since he'd retired young, he was incredibly bored and always looking for anything to do. He'd been parasailing with Canadian geese…in Nicaragua, skateboarded illegally down the Pyramids of Giza, and built a castle for zombies in his backyard (violating zoning laws and scaring his neighbors into wondering what he knew that they didn't). What the twenty-seven-year-old was doing here was anyone's guess. The man scanned the room, his gaze lingering on each and every guest, before he found a chair and sat down.

  "Now that everyone's here," Stacey announced, "it's time for introductions! I'm Stacey, and you've already met Juliette." She indicated the redheaded demon, who simply nodded to the guests but managed a sideways sneer at me. "Why don't we go around the room?"

  "If I have to." Dennis sighed. "Dennis Blunt. My parents made me come. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here."

  Wren didn't give us time to react to this. "Wren Gable!" She pulled on her husband's arm. "Wife of Thad Gable. I'm excited to be here!" She turned to kiss her husband on the cheek, but he shot her a look that would've seared her lips off, so she stopped.

  "Thad Gable." He sneered. "I'm sure everyone knows who I am."

  Lauren raised her hand. "I don't know who you are."

  "Well, you're just a kid," he said. "Ask your parents. They know who I am."

  Betty piped up, "Are you a serial killer?"

  Thad jumped, spilling his drink. "Why would you think that?"

  "Because that's the only reason we'd know who you are," Betty suggested.

  To be fair, it made sense to me.

  "No," he said as he refreshed his drink. "I'm not. But I defended one."

  Inez frowned. "You had to defend a serial killer? From police or bad guys?"

  "No…I…um…" Thad struggled to find an answer.

  "From ninjas?" Ava's eyes grew wide.

  "I didn't defend him from ninjas!" Thad shrieked. "I defended him in court!" He sat down and scowled at the girls.

  Arthur stood up, smiling at Violet, who remained seated. "I'm Arthur Kasinski, and this is my lovely wife, Violet. We have a large farm not far from here, and we are so happy to be here supporting the Girl Scouts. Right, honey?"

  Violet nodded her agreement as Arthur sat down. She looked serene and happy. They both did. Was that how Rex and I would be fifty years from now? I hoped so.

  "Enos McQuaid," the young man said as he struggled to stand. While not grossly so, he was definitely overweight. "I was an inventor. Now I'm a man of leisure." He looked around awkwardly.

  "What's a man of leisure?" Inez asked.

  "Maybe it's a planet?" Lauren asked. "Are you from another planet?"

  Enos shifted his considerable weight from one foot to another. "No, it means I have lots of free time. I don't really work. Not anymore."

  "What did you invent?" Ava asked.

  He looked relieved to have a subject he understood more than he understood little girls. "It's an app on your cell phone that tells you when to brush your teeth."

  The girls looked at each other then turned toward him.

  "Is it for stupid people?" Betty asked. "Because everyone knows when to brush their teeth."

  Lauren spoke up. "Maybe it's for babies. Babies don't know when to brush their teeth."

  Ava rolled her eyes. "Babies don't have teeth!"

  "Or cell phones," Inez added.

  "Well…" Enos looked confused. "I guess there are enough people who needed reminding, or I wouldn't have been able to sell it for millions."

  The girls immediately started whispering among themselves. My guess was they were trying to invent something no one needed so they could make millions too.

  Taylor got to her feet. "I'm Taylor Burke, and as you all know, I was one of Iowa's 40 Under 40 Top Business Leaders last year, was just named CEO of the Year by Insurance Magazine and was the state's youngest Gold Award winner." She shot Ava a quick glare. "And when I was a Girl Scout, we didn't do silly things like this. We camped in tents we made out of whatever we could find, and we lived off the land. Girls now have it too easy."

  I was pretty sure Taylor never did any of those things when she was a Scout. In fact, she probably lied to earn badges quickly and made others do chores for her. Maybe I'd invite her camping with my troop sometime. My girls made the twins in The Parent Trap look like amateurs.

  Did these people know each other? The introductions implied that they didn't. In fact, the only recognition between guests had been Taylor and Thad. These people had to know each other, at least marginally, since the number of major donors in Des Moines was probably limited.

  "Hi, everyone!" Soo Jin's voice next to me gave me a start. "I'm Dr. Soo Jin Body, the medical examiner based in Who's There, Iowa."

  I waited for the usual drooling to start. Soo Jin was willowy with perfect skin and glossy black hair in a sleek bob. Her sweet nature was genuine, leading men and women to fall for her. I kept my eyes on Thad, who didn't disappoint as his eyes went up and down her figure. Wren didn't notice, but Taylor did. And she did not look happy.

  Enos's eyebrows went up hopefully. "You're playing the part of the coroner?" He probably hoped he'd be a victim.

  The lovely doctor blushed. "Oh! No! I can see where that might be confusing. I really am a medical examiner—but not a coroner. I'm not here in any professional capacity. I'm just here to help with the troop." She indicated the four girls on the floor in front of us.

  "What's the difference?" Enos asked.

  Soo Jin smiled. "It's an easy mistake. The titles seem interchangeable, but they aren't. A coroner is an elected official and doesn't have to have any medical degree. Whereas a medical examiner is a real doctor and is a hired position."