Chapter 5
Five
“I don’t want to watch that poor woman collapse again,” Allison protested. “That’s very macabre, Vivienne.”
Seeing that wouldn’t thrill me either.
But I couldn’t help it. I was very intrigued about the mysterious hand reaching across the table. I had to watch the footage.
Especially considering how when I replayed that back in my head I realized it was probably totally innocent. If I say that it was nothing, I could let it go. Presumably.
“I think we should watch it once,” Taylor said. “The whole shebang. See if anything feels out of the ordinary. Then you should delete it.”
Vivienne nodded, but gave no verbal confirmation. It felt a little like a loophole to me, but I was paranoid.
Everyone unbuckled and piled out of the van. Taylor nearly face-planted on the driveway curb but recovered himself and waved off Reginald’s offer of assistance. He then gallantly offered a hand to Vivienne and Allison as they stepped down.
"Let’s go in the parlor," I said, herding everyone up the porch steps. "I'll get us something to drink that isn't a mint julep. And snacks if anyone is hungry.”
"Please, God, no juleps," Allison murmured.
When I immediately went to let Teddy out of the laundry room, he was waiting at the door, clearly affronted that we'd been gone so long, and even more affronted when nobody scooped him up immediately upon his entry into the parlor.
He settled for winding around everyone's ankles instead, a tripping hazard in a room full of people.
I was forced to bend down and pick him up.
He was a sly skunk, that’s for sure.
I flipped on the parlor lamps, poured five glasses of the good sweet tea and sat down across from Vivienne, who had already settled into the wingback chair with her camera balanced on her knee.
"Okay," she said. "Everyone ready?"
"No," Taylor said, and drank his tea like it was bourbon.
Which it was, partially. I saw he was tipping a flask over the glass.
I was reminded of the last time I’d had a group of guests in the parlor attempting to figure out what the hell was going on. The bachelor/bachelorette party last December had been a total disaster, with the bride faking her disappearance and the groom an actual murderer.
I really hoped no one in the parlor for this gala weeknight was a murderer.
It wouldn’t be great advertising to be the B&B where killers let their hair down.
Also, Taylor’s excessive drinking was similar to what I’d seen at the bachelorette weekend from Coco, the bride’s cousin. She had loaded the entire time and it turned out it was because it was nerves. Fear.
Was Taylor afraid of something? Being sued? Blackmail? Getting caught in a crime?
"Play the damn thing," Reginald said, snapping me out of my reverie.
Vivienne turned the little screen so it faced the room, angling it so we could all crowd around.
On the tiny display, the magnolia tree swayed gently in what had been, an hour ago, an entirely different kind of evening.
The candlelit terrace glowed. The crowd murmured.
Evelyn Carrington's voice, tinny and small through the camera's speaker, drifted out into my parlor like the ghost of gala’s past.
Friends. Supporters. Benefactors.
I held Teddy tightly, his little nose twitching at the screen like he, too, sensed something was off.
The camera held steady on the wide shot. Evelyn was at the little table, the silver cup gleaming in the candlelight, the crowd in front of her from Vivienne’s perspective about twenty feet back. And then, just at the edge of the frame, a hand entered from the right.
Just a hand. Pale, and wearing what looked like a silver bracelet. No watch. No rings. Nothing really distinctive, which felt almost deliberately unhelpful, like the universe had decided I needed a mystery with absolutely zero shortcuts.
The hand set something down on the small table beside Evelyn's cup and then withdrew, quick and unhurried at the same time. It appeared to be a woman’s hand.
"Wait, go back," I said. "Go back, go back."
Vivienne rewound it, and we watched it again. And a third time, because none of us could quite believe our eyes the first two times.
"The drink is already there," Reginald said slowly. "This is probably just a server."
"The cup is already there," Allison finished. "Are they bringing the straw?"
"The straw was already there,” Taylor commented.
“Or swapped it?” Vivienne asked.
“Maybe it has nothing to do with her drink or the straw or anything else. Maybe Evelyn had a stroke,” I said.
The room was quiet.
Even Taylor had stopped fidgeting with his now empty glass. “I’d like to say you’re right, Harper. That certainly would make sense. But is anyone else getting the heebie jeebies from that hand right now?”
Teddy chittered. He clearly agreed.
“It feels off to me,” Vivienne said. “Though I don’t know why. Maybe it was just a medical emergency.”
"Whose hand is that?" I asked, even though I knew good and well nobody in this room had the answer, because if they did, they would've said so. I also knew it wasn’t any of their hands. Taylor had thick mitts. Reginald had pronounced knuckles covered in brown hair. Vivienne’s skin was darker. Allison’s was older.
"Could be anyone," Reginald said.
“Not really,” Taylor said, doubtfully.
I had to agree with him.
“I mean, that’s not my hand,” he said, holding up a palm that could easily hold a basketball.
Everyone made a show of putting up their hands.
It wasn’t until mine was in the air that I realized the only person whose hand that could be was…me.
“I think it’s safe to say the only person here not ruled out is Harper,” Reginald said, forcing a smile. His voice had gone tight in a way I recognized from earlier that evening, when he'd talked about porticos and public humiliation. “I highly doubt she was responsible for anything nefarious.”
I would take that as a compliment. “Thank you, Reginald. I can assure everyone it was not me. I was standing to the left of Vivienne.”
"Half the committee was milling around that table setting up for the toast," Allison said.
"It's not anyone's job to touch her cup, though," Vivienne said. "That's the thing. I watched the setup for twenty minutes before the speech started. Nobody touched that table. The server put the cup down once and then it just sat there. Until this."
I doubted that Vivienne had clocked every single second of that time but I wasn’t going to argue.
"How long before she started drinking?" I asked.
Vivienne squinted at the little timestamp in the corner. "Ninety seconds. Give or take."
Ninety seconds. Long enough to do just about anything to a drink if you knew what you were doing and didn't mind an audience of three hundred looking squarely at you.
"Well," Taylor said, into the silence, "that's just terrific.
" He set his glass down harder than necessary.
"I fell on top of that woman in the middle of a medical emergency!
In front of half the Garden District. That footage gets out and I'm the drunk fool who face-planted onto a dying woman while some faceless hand is doing God-knows-what to her drink thirty seconds earlier.
My distillery's name is attached to that gala.
Do you have any idea what that's going to do to Afterlife Spirits?
I've got a launch in Nashville in six weeks. "
“How do you know she’s dying?” Allison asked.
“You know what I mean.” He waved his hand around and sprung up from his chair. “She didn’t look alive, that’s what Vivienne said.”
"Taylor, I don't think anyone's worried about your bourbon distribution right now," Allison said.
"Easy for you to say. You're not the one who's going to be a meme by Monday morning." He scrubbed a hand down his face. "Tripping Distiller Kills Society Matron. That's the headline. I can see it already."
That was a terrible headline. I thought it would read more like Society Matron Crushed by Bourbon King. Or Last Dance at Gala for Magnolia Matron.
"She's not — " I started, and then stopped, because I genuinely did not know if Evelyn was dead, dying, or sitting up in a hospital bed right then demanding better lighting.
"Nobody's calling it a headline yet," Reginald said, though he didn't sound entirely convinced either.
Taylor picked up the glass pitcher of sweet tea and poured more into his tumbler. Then he threw a liberal dose of bourbon from his flask in it.
“If you’re that worried, maybe you should stop drinking,” Vivienne pointed out.
“Pfft.”
Allison had gone very quiet, her tea untouched on the side table, her phone facedown in her lap.
I'd gotten used to her narrating her own internal monologue out loud over the past two days — the deadline panic, the WiFi crisis, the true crime tangents.
The silence felt loud in a way that made the hair on my arms stand up.
"Allison?" I said. Maybe it was just seeing Evelyn collapse like that had her rattled. “Are you okay?”
She looked up, and something in her expression had shifted. Guilty, maybe. Or resigned.
"I need to tell you all something," she said. "And it's going to sound bad, given the circumstances, so I'd appreciate it if everyone could reserve judgment until I'm finished."
"That's an ominous start," Vivienne said.
"It gets worse." Allison twisted her hands together in her lap. "Evelyn sent me a cease and desist letter too, like she did Taylor. Six weeks ago. About the book."
I sat up straighter. "The Garden District family saga?"