Chapter 4
Four
An expletive rang through the air. It took me a second to realize it was me who’d blurted it out.
As Taylor toppled onto a much smaller Evelyn everybody moved at once.
"Get him off her!" the anesthesiologist barked, and two men I didn't know hauled Taylor backward by the armpits.
He came up sputtering, bourbon-soaked and mortified, smoothing his hair back and eyeing the prone and very still Evelyn with horror.
"I tripped," he said, to no one, to everyone. "I didn't—I wasn't trying to—"
"It’s okay, Taylor. We know it was an accident. Sit down," I told him, steering him by the elbow toward one of the wrought iron chairs a few feet away. He sat. Hard. He looked queasy.
I knew the feeling. A quick glance back at Evelyn made my stomach flip. It didn’t look good over there.
Crowded around Evelyn in a loose semi-circle were a dozen attendees, equal parts concern and morbid curiosity.
Somewhere behind me a woman was already narrating the scene into her phone, low and breathless, and I made a mental note to find her later and confiscate that footage through sheer force of will, because if this went viral before the family had even been notified I was not going to be okay with that.
The anesthesiologist had Evelyn on her back, two fingers pressed to her throat. Her ice-blue gown had ridden up around her calves in a way that felt wrong to see, too undignified for a woman who probably hadn't been photographed at an unflattering angle since the Reagan administration.
"Pulse is thready," he said, mostly to himself. "Someone call it in again, tell them to step on it."
"Currently on with 911," someone called back. “They’re en route.”
I crouched down at the edge of the little cleared space, close enough to see, not so close that I'd be in the way.
Which was probably me just being delusional. I’m sure the doctor would have preferred everyone take at least a dozen giant steps back. Or maybe he didn’t care.
At any rate, there was a thin trail of something at the corner of Evelyn's mouth. I'd assumed it was saliva, but the porch lights caught it wrong, or right, and I saw it wasn't clear fluid.
It was pink. Watery, but pink, streaked faintly down toward her jaw.
Blood. Or blood mixed with something.
Yikes. That couldn’t be a sign of anything good.
It wasn’t active bleeding or coughing. Nothing dramatic.
Just a thin line that made my stomach drop somewhere around my heels, because I was pretty sure that wasn’t indicative of a stroke or a heart attack.
You know, with all my medical expertise.
But after four years of co-hosting a true crime podcast you pick up a thing or two.
Out of instinct, I looked around for the straw.
It had rolled a few inches away from Evelyn’s hand, glinting in the light of the exterior garden lights. The silver straw was etched with the same delicate vine pattern as the cup, which was lying on its side a few feet away, ice melting into a dark stain on the flagstone.
The straw wasn't straight.
It should have been. It was a straw with a singular purpose. One job, be a tube. But there was a slight, almost imperceptible kink about a third of the way down, like it had been bent and then not quite bent back. Had it looked like that before?
Maybe. I wasn’t sure. There’d been no reason to study a straw closely. Half of it had been inside the cup anyway. So maybe I was reading too much into it. Maybe a family heirloom would have imperfections. Dings and dents.
Yet the tip looked wrong too, though I couldn't have told you why if you held my skunk hostage. Just a little too narrow, maybe, or catching the light strangely, like there was something at the end of it that shouldn't be there.
Taylor's boot had come down near it during the fall. I wondered if he'd stepped on it and that’s why he had fallen. That would also have explained the kink.
I was building a mystery out of a man three mint juleps deep tripping over his own dress shoes.
"Ma'am, I need you to back up," one of the tuxedoed men said to me, not unkindly, and I realized I'd drifted closer than I meant to.
"Sorry." I stood, one foot slipping out of my shoe. Dancing a little on the opposite foot, I crammed the heel back on. "Sorry, I just wanted to know if she is going to be okay."
Nobody answered me, which was an answer in itself.
“Unless you’re family, I need you to back up,” the doctor told me. “And make yourself useful and get these people off the terrace and onto the lawn.”
“Of course.” I could be useful. I was an innkeeper and newly adept at herding humans.
Straightening my shoulders back, I clapped my hands to get everyone’s attention.
“Evelyn is being well cared for by a doctor and the ambulance is on its way. The doctor has kindly asked that we all exit the terrace and head onto the lawn. If anyone would like to depart the event, please wait until after the emergency vehicle has arrived.”
I did my best arm-swooping motions, gesturing for everyone to move off of the stone.
It seemed like if I just got really close to people they instinctively stepped back.
No one wanted their personal space invaded by the woman flapping her arms like a bird.
Or an overly enthusiastic flight attendant.
The sirens were already coming closer and a few minutes later the ambulance swung into the circular driveway of the mansion.
Two EMTs came around the side of the house at a jog, kits swinging, and the doctor rattled off vitals in a clipped, efficient voice.
He sounded nothing like the man who'd been eating deviled eggs and complaining about his backhand twenty minutes earlier.
I heard fragments of his report. Unresponsive. Pupils. Respiratory.
And then, low, as if he didn’t want to be overheard, “You might want to have narcan ready. I don't love the presentation, but I'd rather you have it out and not need it."
One of the EMTs, a young guy with a shaved head, looked at him. "You think—"
"I don't think anything yet. I'm covering bases." His jaw was tight. "Depressed respiration, pinpoint response, that thin discharge. It's not textbook for anything else I can think of standing on a lawn in the dark."
It was at that moment that he glanced over and realized I’d gotten everyone else off of the terrace but myself. I was hovering. Listening. Being what to his eyes probably appeared to be just plain nosy.
“Get on back in the house,” he told me sharply.
He had such a dad demeanor that I felt instantly chastised. “Do you need anything?” I asked.
“Have the musicians set up in the south side yard. We’ll take Mrs. Carrington around the north. No one needs to be a spectator.” He gave me a pointed look.
That remark was clearly meant for me.
I did as I was told because the man needed to focus on Evelyn. Even though the EMTs had taken over, he was still a doctor and might be needed.
As I wandered to the open doors that led to the foyer, I processed all I’d seen and heard.
Narcan.
The word landed somewhere in my chest and just sat there, refusing to make sense.
Narcan was for overdoses. I knew that much from the podcast, from Maggie's endless research rabbit holes, from the handful of true crime cases we'd covered that had opioids tangled up somewhere in the mix.
Heck, from the news. It was everywhere emergency services were rendered these days, including with firemen and police officers.
Yet it wasn't a word you expected to hear floating over a magnolia tree at a historic preservation gala, next to a woman in a designer gown who insisted on champagne flute etiquette and had silver julep straws inherited from her great-grandmother.
Evelyn Carrington. An opioid addict?
It felt on its surface, unlikely.
Not because of socio-economics. The opioid crisis was everywhere and no one was immune from its clutches. One back injury and suddenly someone could spiral out into the nightmare of substance issues.
It was more that she didn’t present as anything other than sharp-eyed. And razor-tongued.
She didn't act like someone hiding something that heavy and debilitating.
But then, I supposed, that was the point of hiding something.
I'd spent enough time now around people who'd buried things—bodies, secrets, decades-old grudges—to know that composure was often the best disguise there was.
Some of the most put-together people I'd ever met were barely holding on by a thread.
The doctor had looked like a man just covering every possible base. Given that I couldn’t read his mind or follow Evelyn to the ER, I was just going to have to chill on the theories until more information was forthcoming.
They got Evelyn onto a stretcher with a brisk, practiced efficiency. Even as I hovered—man, I was being a pro hoverer—I watched Evelyn as they wheeled her past. Her face, what I could see of it around the oxygen mask, was completely devoid of color.
Now that she was gone, I ventured back on the terrace, gaze sweeping around for anything out of the ordinary.
A young and harried server crouched down where Evelyn had fallen and began gathering up the wreckage of the toast that never really got going.
She grabbed the cup first, then scooped up the mint into a linen napkin. Then she tossed the straw onto her tray.
"Wait," I said, before I'd fully decided to say anything. "Maybe you should…"
What? Dust it for fingerprints? For controlled substances? What difference did it make?
Besides, she was already moving, weaving back toward the house with her tray.
A man I recognized from the receiving line was grabbing the microphone off of the table where Evelyn had been attempting to give her toast. He was silver-haired and red-faced, clearing his throat.
"Friends," he said. "Please, everyone, I know this is distressing. Evelyn is in excellent hands, and I’m confident we'll have good news very soon.
The Society would very much like tonight to continue in the spirit she intended.
The bar remains open, the band will resume shortly, and I know Evelyn herself would want us to carry on celebrating the important work this gala supports. "
There was a smattering of uncertain applause, the kind that happens when people aren't sure if clapping is appropriate but feel the social pressure to do something with their hands.
I did not clap.
Instead, I looked around for my Midnight House guests, and found them already clustered near the edge of the terrace. I was hoping I could convince them to get the heck out of there now that the ambulance was gone.
Taylor had gone pale beneath his sunburn, still sitting where I'd put him, turning an empty julep glass over and over in his hands.
Reginald stood beside him with his arms crossed so tightly it looked painful, jaw working.
Allison had her phone out, but for once she wasn't typing.
She was just staring at the screen like she'd forgotten what she was holding it for.
Vivienne stood slightly apart from the others, her camera lowered but not put away, her expression unreadable in the flickering lantern light.
"I think I'd like to go back to the B&B," Allison said finally, very quietly. "If no one else is ready to leave I can call a cab."
"I’m ready to head out too," Reginald said. "I’m no longer in the mood for canapés."
Taylor didn't say anything, but he stood up on the second try. “Nasty business,” he said. “I feel just downright terrible about what happened. I probably broke that poor woman’s ribs.”
“I think she was already dead,” Vivienne said. “When you fell on her.”
That caught all of us off guard. “Dead?” I asked. “They put an oxygen mask on her.”
She shrugged. “She looked dead to me.”
Goosebumps rolled up my arms and I wasn’t sure why other than what the heck, Vivienne?
“Does that mean you’re staying?” Reginald asked her.
At that moment, I appreciated his forthrightness.
“No, I’m ready to leave. The vibe is terrible for filming now.”
"Then we can all leave together," I said. "Let me just find the valet ticket for the van."
We made our way back through the foyer, past clusters of guests who were doing a truly heroic job of pretending the evening hadn't just been derailed. I caught snatches of conversation as we passed.
Was it her heart?
I heard she collapsed mid-sentence.
Do you think the gala insurance covers this?
Covered what? Like worker’s comp? It was a bizarre thing to be curious about.
But if I had learned nothing in the past eleven months it was that people were bizarre.
The valet brought the rental van around and I climbed in, wishing I could kick off my heels and drive barefoot.
Nobody spoke much on the ride back to Midnight House.
A glance in my rearview mirror showed Reginald staring out the window with his jaw set.
Allison typed something into her phone, deleted it, typed it again.
Taylor had gone from pale to gray, muttering under his breath about how he'd never fallen on a dying woman before.
Which I think was safe to say, most people hadn’t.
I kept thinking about the straw. About the thin pink line at the corner of Evelyn's mouth. About the word narcan hanging in the humid night air like it belonged there, which it absolutely did not.
It wasn't until I'd pulled into the driveway at Midnight House, cut the engine, and turned to tell everyone we'd arrived, that Vivienne spoke again.
"I got something," she said.
Everyone sat up a little straighter. Even Taylor roused himself.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
Vivienne held up her camera, the little screen glowing faintly in the dark interior of the van, her thumb already hovering over the playback button.
"I mean I was filming the toast. Wide shot, the magnolia tree, the crowd, the whole setup, for atmosphere.
" Her voice was steady, but there was something underneath it, something careful.
"And right before Evelyn started to cough, right before any of this happened, someone reached across the table. "
All my guests reacted in various ways.
Allison leaned in closer to Vivienne. “Who?”
Taylor harrumphed. “Poppycock.”
"Reached across the table and did what?" Reginald asked, and he sounded as serious as he had discussing cornices.
Vivienne looked down at the little screen, then back up at the rest of us, her expression caught somewhere between reluctant and electrified.
"I think we should all watch it together. You tell me if you see what I see."
That sounded both intriguing and terrifying.
“I'm in,” I said. “I’m guessing those mint juleps were strong, but not that strong.”
“Too soon, Harper,” Taylor said. “Too soon.”