Chapter 7
Seven
Hollis didn’t think me or Taylor was funny.
He just stared at me. It was a skill he had. He could just stare until I felt compelled to tell him the truth.
“I came back because Teddy has a nose for murderers,” I told Hollis, which was true, if not exactly the answer he was looking for. “Also because I have four suspects sleeping under my roof tonight and I would like to know what, exactly, I’m locking the doors against.”
“That’s not comforting, Harper.”
“It wasn’t meant to be. It was meant to be honest.”
Hollis pinched the bridge of his nose the way he did when he was trying to decide whether to be a detective or a neighbor first. Tonight, the detective was winning, but only by a length.
“Puncture wound,” I said, circling back before he could redirect me again. “Inside her mouth. That’s what you said.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Could she have swallowed something? Broken glass, maybe, if the cup cracked, or a shard off the straw itself if it snapped…” I stopped, because Hollis’s expression was sour. “What?”
“The straw’s missing,” he said. “You know that already. I know you know that, because Marcus already texted his manager that a woman and a skunk interrogated him about a piece of flatware.”
“I prefer ‘asked politely.’ And is a straw flatware? I’m not sure about that. Isn’t it more like barware?”
“He used the word interrogated.” Hollis exhaled through his nose. “And I don’t give a damn what a straw is etiquette-wise.”
“Evelyn Carrington would have,” I pointed out.
Hollis looked up at the night sky. I suspected he was counting to five. Or praying to Jesus to grant him patience.
“A clean break wouldn’t explain a puncture that precise. Glass doesn’t do that. Neither does a snapped straw, not unless somebody engineered it to do that.” He caught himself saying more than he meant to and closed his mouth around the rest of it.
“So not an accident,” I said quietly. “Not poison, either. Or anything else. Like an overdose.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” I held up the balled napkin, which I’d been clutching this whole time.
“Teddy found this in the laundry cart. Crushed mint, way more than a single julep needs, hidden at the bottom instead of thrown in the trash where it belonged.
It smells bitter under the mint. Allison thinks it's poison. I think somebody wanted us thinking it was poison.”
Hollis looked at the napkin like he wanted to rip it out of my hand and toss it into the burbling fountain on the manicured lawn.
“Give it here,” he said, and produced an evidence bag from his jacket pocket with the weary efficiency of a man who always had one on him.
I’d seen him pull gloves out once before as well, and frankly, I found that a little disturbing.
I wasn’t the only one who needed a more life-affirming social life these days.
I dropped the napkin in. He sealed it, wrote something on the little label without looking at what he was writing, because his eyes were on me instead. “You went digging through a catering cart at an active death scene.”
“It wasn’t active. It was very sedate. Lots of standing around. No one said anything other than that this is a party.”
“Harper.”
“I know.” I did know. The adrenaline that had carried me through the last two hours was starting to ebb, and I was crashing out. I was getting a little tired of being present when people croaked. “I know, Hollis. I wasn’t trying to make your night harder.”
Something in his face softened again, the way it had before, quick and involuntary, like he couldn’t quite help it even when he wanted to. “You never are trying,” he said. “I do believe that.”
“I just have a talent for it.”
“Well, stop being so talented. It’s a liability.
” But he said it gently, and his hand came up like he might touch my arm before he seemed to remember there were four witnesses and a homicide investigation happening around us, and he put the evidence bag away instead.
“Stay here. All of you. I need to walk the terrace again before the crime scene unit gets territorial about footprints.”
He turned to go, and that was when I saw her.
Hyacinth Maxwell was crouched at the edge of the lawn, half-hidden behind the boxwood hedge that ran along the property line, close enough to the terrace that she had a clear line of sight to the exact spot where Evelyn had collapsed.
She looked very focused and in her hand was a small silver compact open in one hand, tilted toward the moonlight.
She was using something like tweezers or a nail file to work at the clasp of her bracelet.
The David Yurman bracelet.
She got it loose, held it up for one long assessing second like she was deciding something, and then she dropped it into the mulch bed at the base of the hedge and pushed a little dirt over it with the toe of her shoe.
“Um,” I said, in a voice that came out significantly louder than I intended. “Guys. Guys, look.”
Vivienne’s camera was already up. Of course it was. That woman had reflexes like a nature documentarian waiting for the leopard to finally pounce.
“Is she burying evidence?” Allison whispered. “Naughty girl.”
“She’s burying jewelry,” Reginald corrected.
“That doesn’t sound suspicious to you?” Taylor demanded. “Repeat what you just said.”
“She’s burying jewelry. In a hedge. At a crime scene. Which, forgive me, does functionally amount to burying evidence.”
“That’s a hell of a thing to do in front of five witnesses,” Taylor said.
“She doesn’t know she’s in front of five witnesses,” Vivienne murmured, not lowering the lens. “She thinks everyone is busy gossiping or drinking.”
Hyacinth straightened, smoothed her dress, and glanced up. She found all five of us staring at her from twenty feet with zero discretion.
I looked at Hollis.
Make that four of us staring at Hyacinth. Hollis was much better at being discreet.
Hyacinth only momentarily looked panicked. Then she smiled brightly.
“Harper!” she called, crossing the grass toward us with her arms already extended for a hug I had absolutely no intention of accepting. “I heard the most awful rumors. Is it true? About Evelyn?”
“It’s true,” I said, sidestepping the hug in favor of waving my arms dramatically.
“So awful,” Hyacinth said, shaking her head. “Just tragic.”
“Very. Hey, what were you doing over there?”
“Where?” Her eyes were very wide. Very blue. Very unconvincing.
“By the hedge.”
“Oh nothing, just needed a moment. It’s been a shock. I lost an earring earlier, actually, I was looking for it.” She touched her ear, which had two earrings on it, both present and accounted for, a fact she seemed to realize a half-second too late, because her hand dropped very fast.
“Your bracelet’s gone,” Vivienne said pleasantly, camera still trained on Hyacinth’s face. “You had it earlier. The David Yurman.”
“Did I?” Hyacinth laughed, a high, tinkling sound that had absolutely no joy in it whatsoever. “Goodness, I can’t keep track of my own accessories tonight, what a night, isn’t it just terrible about Evelyn—”
“You told me about that bracelet an hour ago,” I said. “On the front steps. You made sure I saw it.”
Her smile stayed exactly where it was, but something behind her eyes went cold and calculating, just for a second, before the warmth returned. “I really don’t know what you mean, Harper. It’s been so long since school, I don’t think you know me nearly as well as you think you do.”
“But I’m still hilarious,” I told her.
She gave a tinkly laugh. “So true! If you’ll excuse me.” She was already moving, already swallowed up by the thinning crowd near the terrace doors, moving with the unhurried speed of someone trying very hard to look like they weren’t fleeing.
“Well,” Reginald said, into the silence she left behind. “That was either very stupid or very smart.”
“You said that about the bracelet the first time,” I told him.
“It bears repeating.”
Hollis watched us volley. “What are you talking about?”
I told him about the bracelet and the footage Vivienne had. “Hyacinth Maxwell buried her bracelet in the hedge, as you saw,” I said. “The one with her hand on Vivienne’s footage. She lied about it to my face just now, badly, and then fled.”
“Did she flee?” Reginald asked. “She didn’t see in a particular rush.”
This man and his semantics. I wished he’d stick to cornices.
Hollis turned to eye the retreating Hyacinth. When he turned back to me, I didn’t approve of his expression. He looked amused.
“Please don’t tell me Hyacinth is clever or that she looks too sweet to be guilty of anything because I won’t be responsible for what I might say to you if you do,” I warned him.
“Ah, so you’re good friends?” He gave me a grin.
“Not even frenemies.”
Hollis looked toward the terrace doors where Hyacinth had disappeared, then back at the hedge, then at me, and I watched him do the math on whether to chase her down himself or send an officer.
“Stay,” he told me, for the second time that night, with the specific flat emphasis of a man who did not believe I would.
“I”m not a dog,” I told him.
“A dog would be more obedient.” He strode toward the house.
My jaw dropped. “That’s very rude!” I called after him.
“Do we dig up the bracelet?” Taylor asked. “Seems a shame to leave it in the dirt.”
But before any of us could respond, two uniformed officers were already heading toward the hedge with a flashlight and an evidence bag that was surely destined for the same collection as my mint napkin.
The detectives who arrived on scene wandered around a bit and asked us a few questions. None of them seemed particularly concerned with the situation. I imagine they had their doubts as to whether they were even dealing with a homicide or not.
The questions they asked our little Midnight House cohort were simple.
Did you see Mrs. Carrington sip her drink?
Can we see any pictures of video you took?
And that was that.
“I thought they’d at least ask if she had any enemies,” I complained. “That seemed very surface level.”
“We’d be here all night if they asked that,” Allison said.