Death By Rum Balls Page 6

  “Can I please have everyone’s attention,” Jiff was saying to the guests who were all congested in the wide entry to the dining room off the hall. “This is a crime scene and we all need to sit and wait for the police to get here.” Once everyone stepped back, he closed the ten-foot pocket doors that separated the dining room with Larry and Donna in it from the hall and the double parlor where everyone went to wait. LB stayed with Donna, holding her hand.

  Jiff came into the kitchen and asked Frank to make sure no one left by the back door. “If they try to leave, get their names.” He turned and said to me, “Brandy, take Julia and go to the front. If anyone tries to leave, get his or her name.”

  “What if they won’t tell me their names?” Frank asked.

  “Take a picture of them with your cell phone,” Jiff said. “I already called 911 for an ambulance.”

  Most of the guests were agreeable while we waited, and stayed. I sat next to Julia and asked her to help me make a list of the people who were here waiting in case they wanted to leave.

  I started on a list of names of the guests I remembered meeting. I counted twenty-one names in all counting Julia, LB, Larry, Donna, Jiff, Frank, and myself. I planned to cross-check them with Frank:

  LB & Julia

  Me and Jiff

  Frank

  Larry and Donna (Twilight)

  Ned and Janice-neighbors across the street

  President of Neighborhood Association & wife – note: wife in Gourmet Club, Ashton and Willa Tripps.

  MacFinns, Sheila and Patrick-Sheila in Gourmet Club & Pilates

  gourmet cooking club ladies’ w/spouses:

  -Bicky and her husband Matt, last name Favalara—also in Pilates and cooking

  -Lindsay and Lenny something

  -Cherie and Dr. Noel St. Pierre

  Church Ladies & spouses

  Monica and husband

  (Cheryl and Suzette did not attend)

  I asked Julia what LB’s full name was for the list and where was he from.

  “I don’t know. I can’t think,” she said.

  “Larry mentioned LB was from Colorado when we all met. Is he?”

  “I don’t know why Larry said that. He just met LB tonight.”

  “I wonder how he knew that?” I mused.

  “I should’ve known Larry would screw something up for me tonight,” she said.

  “What? You think Larry planned to be the dead guy at your party? And Donna? Her new husband is dead and she might not be far behind,” I said. “Look over this list of everyone here and see who didn’t come.”

  “Frank is the one who sent out the invites, so he knows who said they were coming and who didn’t respond,” Julia said.

  Right. I should’ve realized Frank would know more about the people on the list, plus it was hard to get Julia to concentrate.

  “Well, let’s see. Who might have a grudge against Larry and Donna?” I asked.

  “They didn’t know anyone here. You knew of them since I told you, but even you never met them before. No one did. Frank never met them before tonight either,” she said.

  “So, that makes me think you might have been the intended target, or maybe someone spiked those rum balls to make you look bad,” I said. While we waited for the ambulance I told her, “Don’t you want to get your coat and things so you’re ready to go to the hospital with Larry and Donna when the ambulance gets here?”

  “Larry is going to the morgue. Everybody can see that,” she said.

  I was about to ask Julia to tell me about each of the guests on the list when LB pushed open the dining room double doors with one hand while he held the small, limp body of Donna in his arms and said, “We need to get her to an emergency room or she might not make it.” He ran to the front door and Jiff opened it and went out with LB to help get Donna into a car. Frank came running with Julia’s coat and handbag.

  “I don’t know Donna that well. Why should I go to the hospital with her?” Julia asked.

  I put down the pen on the tablet I was about to take notes on and said, “Maybe because that’s your brother in there. That’s his wife—your new sister-in-law—and this happened in your house? I think it’s your moral duty to follow this through,” I said. “Now, go.”

  She was giving me a look that pretty much suggested I should mind my own business when LB and Jiff ran back in and said to her, “It looks like she’s having trouble breathing. We need to get her to an ER now.”

  “Julia, go with LB and tell him how to get to University Hospital. It’s the closest. I’ll talk to the police when they get here and tell them where you are,” Jiff said.

  “Do you mind staying here with Frank tonight?” Then without waiting for my reply, Julia immediately got up and left with LB, while Frank helped her put on her coat as she was being hurried out the door.

  While we waited for the police and various departments to arrive in droves, I asked Jiff to wait at the front door while I went to the kitchen to find Frank. I asked him if he had touched all the gold foil boxes that had been delivered so far. He told me yes, and I asked him to work with me and pick up each one and turn it over so I could make a list of the numbers on the bottom. He did. I wrote down the numbers one, four, six and eight. Boxes two, three, five, and seven were missing. The box in the dining room on the table next to the bodies should have had a number, as well as the empty box Larry left on the buffet table.

  “Frank, do you know which number was given to Julia for her box of rum balls?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he said. “She doesn’t think I know, but I took the message from the president of the club when she called. I just told her to call her back for her number. She had number three.”

  “Do you know what boxes Larry and Donna took with them to the French Quarter?”

  “No, not really,” Frank answered.

  If Julia’s box three was still here and they took two boxes with them, then the two in the dining room were either two, three, five, or seven. I really hoped Julia’s box was not one of the missing two Larry and Donna took to the French Quarter and probably tossed in a trash can. They all needed to be tested.

  The ambulance arrived, along with the coroner, the forensics team, and the supporting cast of the police department that are required to come and stampede every crime scene. Especially one that was at a party in a nice big mansion, probably with great food that no one was eating. Cops can find free food faster than they can find a donut shop at break time.

  I saw Detective Hanky pull up driving an unmarked police car and double park in the street. She was with a man in plain clothes and I knew it wasn’t Dante. He was still in Houston until Christmas Eve or maybe New Year’s. Maybe he would stay there forever.

  Hanky and Dante were once partners until he was promoted to captain. Now it looked like she had a new partner. A tall, good-looking new partner who had great taste in clothes, even on a policeman’s salary.

  “Hanky,” I said when she and the new guy walked up to Jiff and me waiting on the porch.

  The new guy had his shield out and was about to introduce himself when Hanky spoke up, “Brandy Alexander. Jiff Heinkel. This is Detective Travis Taylor. He’s new to the city but not new to police work. What have we got here, and please don’t tell me Julia is mixed up in murder again.”

  “Again?” Taylor looked confused.

  “Long story, I’ll fill you in later,” Hanky said and looked at Jiff.

  “Right this way. I’ll show you what we found when Julia announced that dinner was about to be served,” Jiff said, leading the way. Before I followed him, I saw Detective Taylor checking out my cleavage.

  Jiff led them to the dining room doorway where he and I stopped. One of the EMTs was listening for a pulse, while the other was administering the paddles to see if they could restart his heart.

  “I thought there were two victims here according to the 911 call,” Hanky said.

  Jiff told Hanky, “Donna was still breathing when we found her, so
LB, one of Julia’s guests, picked her up and drove her to the emergency room. They left about eight minutes ago. Larry had no pulse and appeared to have expired.”

  I added, “The man, LB, is not from here and Julia went with them to give directions to University Hospital.”

  “We weren’t in here when they were discovered,” Jiff told Hanky and Taylor. “We were outside trying to get the people caroling to leave.”

  “You wanted people who came caroling to leave?” Detective Taylor asked. He looked perplexed.

  “Julia had announced we were about to eat right when the caroling started. Brandy and I went out to see if we could politely send them on their way sooner than later,” Jiff explained.

  Hanky and Taylor looked at each other and back to the victim while the EMTs tried to resuscitate Larry. The one with the stethoscope put it down and looked at the detectives. He shook his head no.

  Taylor asked one of the EMTs if they had any idea on what caused his death when another voice answered.

  “Too soon to tell,” the voice said as he pushed past us to have a look at Larry’s body. He wore a jumpsuit with coroner written in very large letters across the back.

  I overheard Detective Taylor ask him, unofficially, if he had any preliminary cause of death. The coroner said the victim showed signs of ingesting poison, but he had no idea which one and wouldn’t know until he completed his autopsy report and ran a tox screen.

  Jiff and I went into the hall to wait and left the two detectives in the dining room. I started to fill him in on what Frank had told me earlier, adding I had really thought most of it was just crazy stuff, nothing to worry about. He reacted about the rat gift box exactly as I expected.

  “I can’t believe someone put three rats in a box. One of you could have been really hurt if any of those had bitten you,” he said, rubbing my arm as he spoke.

  “This is too much to try to focus on in a short period,” I said, and listed them. “The rats. The church ladies. The cooking club hostiles. The decoration violations.” I had to smile at the last one and so did Jiff. “Frank just dumped so much on me this afternoon and I shrugged it all off. I feel terrible now that this happened.”

  “How could you know? Frank can be a little theatrical,” he said. “You know how Julia was saying all the rum ball boxes had a number on the bottom?”

  “Yes, for their blind taste test,” I said. “Which really means they came up with that idea so members couldn’t rig it to win.”

  “The box we got out of the mailbox, you know, the one we gave to Frank? It didn’t have a number on it,” Jiff said.

  “Oh boy,” I said. “Let me think about this. There’s a ninth box. I had Frank turn over the boxes in the kitchen, and I wrote down the numbers. Four numbers were missing. There are two boxes we saw in the dining room. I didn’t see the box without a number. I wonder if it’s the one in the dining room.”

  “That will make it difficult to see who sent that one, but not impossible,” Jiff said. “It has to be someone on the list of people Julia has ticked off.”

  “Not a short list, but a list nonetheless,” I said.

  “You know; I think the coroner is right. Julia’s brother and Donna Twilight look like they could have ingested something to poison them. The way he was sweating could mean he started having the effects even before we met him at the party. It could have been something he ate hours ago,” Jiff said.

  “Frank said or was it Larry who mentioned they took two boxes of rum balls with them when they went down to the French Quarter? When I saw Donna Twilight on the floor, she looked like she was sweating more than she was the last time we saw her. Did you notice?”

  “This is above my pay grade, so let’s let the police figure this out,” Jiff said.

  “I don’t want to be embroiled in any more of Julia’s mess than I have to be, and I don’t want you to be sucked in either. I’m glad she has LB to hold her hand because, with the work crunch at the holidays, I don’t know how much support or time I can give her,” I said.

  Hanky asked no one in particular, “You got a cell number for Julia or the guest? We are gonna want to talk to her and the guy who took the woman out of here.”

  I was in the process of looking up Julia’s cell for Hanky when Detective Taylor asked,

  “You let her leave?”

  No one answered him.

  “So. Julia strikes me as the type who would eat her young. You really think she couldn’t off her brother and his new wife?” Hanky asked getting out her pen and spiral notebook.

  I ignored her. “I made a list of everyone who was here when this happened,” I said handing the list to Hanky. I had also made a copy for myself to keep.

  Hanky and Taylor looked at the list. Taylor said, “Thank God she didn’t have a hundred guests.”

  Hanky asked Jiff and me, “Can you two answer some questions? Then we’ll talk to the others.” To Detective Taylor she said, “Take Brandy, but watch out, she’s friends with the captain.” She winked at me when neither of the men were looking. She asked everyone to wait in the double parlor across from the dining room and then closed those double doors. I would have preferred to talk with her as we had worked together in the past, and she knew I could be helpful. She walked to the far end of the hall to speak with Jiff, leaving me alone with Detective Taylor. Taylor was going to take some training.

  “So you know Captain Deedler?” Taylor asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “So you’re Hanky’s new partner? Permanent?”

  “Yeah. It looks permanent. Captain Deedler is in Houston for a mandatory police conference. All the captains and the chief of detectives had to attend.”

  “I know,” I said. I left off the part where I just found out this afternoon.

  “How well do you know Captain Deedler?” Taylor was trying to read my responses.

  “I’ll give you a hint since you’re new. We grew up next door to each other, and my sister married one of his brothers.”

  “Okay. Got it.” He opened a notebook and said, “State your full name, please.”

  “Brandy. Brandy Alexander,” I said. “Before you ask Detective Newbie, it is not a stage name and I don’t work on Bourbon Street,” I told him. I folded my arms across my chest until I realized it made my boobs looks like they were going to pop out of my top, so I put my arms at my sides.

  “Is it Miss, Mrs., or Ms. Brandy, Brandy Alexander? Two first names, right?”

  “That’s Ms.” I didn’t answer the other one and I tried not to smile. It would only encourage him if he thought he made me laugh.

  “Oh, you’re that Brandy Alexander,” he said, nodding like he’d just made some mystic connection. He looked up and said, “Don’t you date Captain…”

  I cut him off, “Don’t go there,” I said. “Please.”

  “So, what brings you here tonight?” Detective Taylor asked.

  “It’s a party.” I opened my eyes wide and held my hands out even wider to make the point. I added, “I was invited. And now, since there’s a dead person here, you’ve been invited.” I fought the urge to smile but failed.

  “Yes. It’s a party when the police arrive,” he added, and I could see he found it amusing too.

  Not only was he tall, but he was also fit. He looked like he worked out at a gym regularly. He had blondish hair cut short and spiked with gel on top. He started to remove his very nice overcoat, the long kind you see people in colder climates wear. He was about to put it on a chair, but I reached for it and offered to hold it for him.

  He thanked me and said how warm it was inside. Warm inside? The doors had been wide open since the arrival of the EMTs, the police, and forensic team, so inside now felt like outside. I considered putting my own coat on. Where was this guy from—Alaska?

  When I touched his coat, I realized it was cashmere. Nice. The suit he had on was an expensive one. I thought, I bet they paid a lot better wherever he came from than the police department is going to pay him here.

&
nbsp; “Here, let me put that around your shoulders,” Taylor said when he saw me roll my hands in his coat to keep them warm or maybe it was the sound of my teeth chattering that made him take notice.

  “Thanks,” I said as he draped his coat over me.

  “How do you know the victims?” he asked.

  “I never met them before tonight. I only knew Julia had a brother named Larry. This is Julia’s house and she is hosting this party. Her name is Julia Richard. His name is Larry Richard.”

  “How do you spell that last name?”

  “It’s spelled like the man’s name, Richard, but it’s French, Reee…chard,” I said to exaggerate the pronunciation.

  “What can you tell me about the woman victim?” he asked.

  “I met both victims about forty minutes ago. The woman introduced herself as Donna with a stage name of Twilight,” I said. “She had a black eye.”

  Taylor kept writing but lifted his eyebrows at the mention of the shiner.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “All I know about him is what Julia has told me. Julia said her brother lived in Baton Rouge but worked the oil industry from New Orleans to Houston. When we were all introduced, Larry introduced the woman as Donna, his new wife of two weeks. I heard him tell someone else they met speed dating in Houston.”

  “Is that it?” Taylor asked.

  “I saw them sitting at the dining room table eating rum balls,” I said. “And then the next time I saw them; they were still in the dining room. Larry was slumped over on the table and she was on the floor. Larry looked, well, he looked dead. She was barely breathing, or so it seemed to me. I guess that’s why LB grabbed her and took her to the hospital.”