Killer Cocktail by Sheryl J. Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

regulars displeased with the service at their favorite restaurant.
    Tricia and Cassady huddled together on another chaise. Cassady was watching the crime scene come together, but Tricia was watching David. There was something odd about the way she looked at him that I couldn’t quite pinpoint. It wasn’t pure concern, there was something darker and disquieting mixed in. She glanced up for a moment and caught me watching her. I nodded in encouragement, but she looked away. She was thinking something she didn’t want anyone to know about and Tricia knows how to keep her secrets.
    Richard and Rebecca sat a few chaises down, taut and silent. Rebecca had attempted to console David and Mrs.
Vincent, but both mother and son had rejected her overtures. She’d retreated to sit with Richard and quietly watch the horrible proceedings unfold.
    “When’s the last time you saw the deceased?” Detective Myerson asked me. He was a spindly fellow—Ichabod Crane with a buzz cut—and I distracted myself wondering how he could stay warm with absolutely no built-in insulation. He was wearing a suit coat that smelled of old cigarettes and French fries, but I would have gladly taken it had he offered. He didn’t.
    “David carried her out of the great room about ten.”
    He sniffed significantly, then squinted as though he were in pain. I couldn’t tell if it was an editorial comment or a sinus condition. He’d already spoken to everyone else and we’d all talked to the uniformed officers before he arrived, so he had to see our stories were consistent. But the problem with consistent stories is, they don’t give you much to go on. You need something to stand out. “And you didn’t see her again?”
    “No, we tried to keep the party going. It seemed like the polite thing to do.”
    “Were you successful?”
    “Briefly.”
    “And then what?”
    “People left, we went up to our rooms.”
    “Everyone?”
    “Other than the …” I groped for the word. Household servants? Domestic employees? It wasn’t a concept I dealt with on a daily basis, so I wasn’t sure what the current politically correct term was. “Staff. They were still cleaning when we went upstairs.”
    He made a note of that, then squinted a little harder at
what he’d written. Was something already emerging and worrying him? Or did he just need glasses?
    “And where we are is … ?” a voice behind him asked and Detective Myerson’s squint deepened into a grimace of pain.
    “Just getting warmed up,” Myerson said with the forced cheeriness I use when telling a small child on a airplane to pretty please stop kicking the back of my seat. Did we have a homicide detective who didn’t like homicides?
    Or did we have a cop who didn’t like his partner? The owner of the voice stepped around from behind Myerson now, a tall woman with close-cropped blond hair and icy blue eyes accentuated by high cheekbones and a sharp jawline. She looked like some Nordic avenging angel, ready to whip out a flaming sword and dispense justice where she saw fit. She wore a simple black suit with a skirt that was going to make it hard for her to kneel to collect evidence and a jacket so tailored that she’d never get it buttoned over her pistol. A string of onyx beads and moonstones was tucked inside her gray silk tee. She’d been called away from something fun to be here, which partially explained the tightness of her expression and skirt and Myerson’s uneasiness. She put a hand on his arm in greeting and he didn’t seem happy about it.
    She moved the hand quickly and offered it to me. “Darcy Cook, Suffolk County Homicide.”
    I shook her hand, trying to analyze her demeanor and Myerson’s reaction to her. “Molly Forrester, Manhattan civilian.”
    Her Maid of Valhalla mask didn’t shift one iota. “What’s your relationship to the deceased, Ms. Forrester?”
    “Tenuous.”
    “Could you be more specific?”

    “Friend of the sister of the fiancé.”
    “And what’s