How to Crash a Killer Bash by Penny Warner Read Free Book Online

we can,” he continued. “Please, just—”
    The door to the crime scene room opened. All eyes left the detective and focused on the door. Corbin Cosetti staggered out, head down. In his hand, he held his mother’s yapping dog. Its pink-dyed fur was spattered with blood.
    “Mother . . . ,” Corbin stammered, his face pulled back in a pained grimace. “She’s . . . dead. Someone murdered my mother.”
    That’s when the serious screaming began.

    While surprises can be great fun at a party, this wasn’t the kind I had in mind. The surprise was supposed to be the revelation of the “killer,” followed by the anticipated gasps of delight from the amateur sleuths. What now pounded against my eardrums were screams of terror.
    Luckily my cast took direction well, even off script. Along with the San Francisco police officers, they helped herd the large, nearly hysterical group into the large auditorium to await their turn to be questioned. I cooled my heels while the cops began interviewing guests. The VIPs were released sooner than you could say “Where’s my lawyer?” while the rest talked on cell phones or to each other, anxious to be set free.
    It was nearly an hour before I was called into a small classroom where Detective Melvin, ever the party pooper, waited for me.
    “Ms. Parker, we meet again,” the detective said, after I’d been escorted into one of the museum’s educational classrooms. He sat behind a desk, his manicured hands folded, his silk tie perfectly aligned. While the room lacked the hot lights of a police station interrogation room, the Mayan murals depicting human sacrifices did nothing to put me at ease.
    “So . . . you wanted to see me?” I said innocently, avoiding meeting the detective’s eyes. I fiddled with the buttons on my costume.
    When I finally glanced up, he smiled. Sort of.
    “Look, Detective Melvin. I don’t know what I can tell you. Everything was going fine until—” I broke off.
    “Until your ‘victim’ became real.” He sat back in his chair, hands behind his head, and gestured for me to sit. I took the front-and-center chair and reluctantly sat down.
    “So tell me what happened,” Melvin said.
    “I have no idea. We were about to herd the guests into the mural room—the crime scene room—for the second act when suddenly Dee came out . . . her hands all bloody. I thought it was fake blood . . .” I shook my head. Poor Dee. What she must be going through now.
    Melvin sat up and placed his hands flat on the desk. “Let’s back up a little. The rehearsal last night. I heard there was a confrontation between Ms. Jackson and Ms. Miller.”
    I smushed my lips together before answering. Nearly everyone at the rehearsal had heard Dee’s idle threats. Who had blabbed? “Where did you hear that?”
    He ignored my question. “What happened at the rehearsal?” He eyed me, as if he knew something I didn’t and was trying to trap me. But I knew Detective Melvin better than he thought, having “worked” with him on a previous case involving the death of one of my party guests. Although good at his job, he was quick to jump to conclusions. And he overcompensated—that was clear from his intricately embroidered wing tips. I knew from teaching abnormal psychology that this was a classic sign of narcissistic personality disorder.
    “Sounds like you already know,” I said, crossing my arms.
    “I want to hear it from you.”
    I glanced at one of the murals on the wall. Four scantily clad men held down a bleeding victim on some kind of round altar. One of the men gripped a dagger in one hand and the victim’s heart in the other. I shuddered. Was Detective Melvin about to cut out my heart and have it with a little Chianti?
    “Okay, sure, there was a little tension between Dee and Mary Lee at the rehearsal. That always happens during rehearsals. They’re stressful. But we worked it out.”
    He flipped a page of his notebook and scanned the chicken scratch that was