Aunt Gertrude’s visit had certainly added to my social schedule. First the premiere, then the reception. Visits to Bull’s house and visits from him, not to mention from my neighbor, Sharlene. I was maxed out on my personal contact limit, but Auntie insisted we accept the invitation we’d received from the mayor’s wife.
Mike and Toni Haskell lived in a deceptively simple home on Eucalyptus Circle on the west side of Fountain Hills. From the outside, it appeared a simple gray stone house with an arched entryway. The driveway sloped down on the right side of the house and led to a large, circular area for outdoor parking. A winding iron staircase led to the first-floor balcony and a sliding glass entrance into their home.
The living room, dining area and kitchen were all open, and the same burnt orange tile joined the rooms together into one, big mingling area. Buena Vista Social Club played in the background under the chatter of guests.
I stopped walking when I reached the marble island in the kitchen.
Canapés covered with a variety of cheese spreads, brochettes, fruit bouquets and chocolates were just some of the sumptuous finger foods begging me to try them. I loaded up a plate and followed Auntie to our hostess.
“I’m so glad you made it,” Toni said in a low voice through a smile that didn’t move when she talked. Toni isn’t exactly a social butterfly, which makes her duties as first lady difficult to bear. “I don’t know half the people here. When they come up and say how nice it is to see me again, sometimes I freeze.”
“When I’m at a party, I just call everybody Honey,” Auntie said. “Makes them feel special and keeps me from feeling the fool.”
The host and producer of Blue-Ribbon Babes hovered near the appetizers, probably choosing a single item to add to her plate for show. “Is Heather Ozu a big supporter of Mike’s?”
Toni laughed. “She probably drops by every candidate’s parties. Smart celebrities don’t get political. It’s like slapping the faces of half your fans.”
“Clever girl.”
Bert accompanied Heather into the living room and they slipped into mingling mode like professionals. Unlike me, Heather didn’t have awkward moments. I usually spent the first half hour at get-togethers looking for a guest who looked like they wouldn’t bite. I spent the rest of the time debating whether to say hi, since I assumed either they would be repulsed by me or I’d never get away from them.
“I heard about the makeup girl,” Toni said. “If I were you, I’d stay home more. Finding bodies can’t be much fun.”
“You got me there.”
Auntie was doing her card trick on some guests. With the image of Fiona’s poor, dead face still fresh in my mind, I found it difficult to feign interest in the light-hearted conversations taking place around me. When Toni asked if I’d like to see her latest weaving project, I jumped at the chance to go somewhere private.
In a back room, probably a former bedroom from when her kids still lived at home, a large loom rested at an angle, surrounded by shelves of yarn every color of the rainbow.
“This is so soft,” I said, running my fingers over a fluffy black skein.
“That’s alpaca. They’re like miniature llamas. So cute, you almost feel guilty taking their fleece. I’m using that in my latest project, along with these.”
Toni picked up several balls of yarn in neutral colors and held them up one at a time.
“This is mohair.” She held up a mossy green.
“Doesn’t that come from rabbits?”
She gave the ball of yarn a squeeze and giggled. “Close. Angora goats. They look kind of like my mother-in-law’s sheep dog, with curls falling in their eyes.” She picked up another ball of yarn. “I have this off-white worsted wool on the weft.”
“What’s a weft?”
“Do you really want to know?”
I paused. “I probably wouldn’t understand, anyway. I’m craft impaired, but I can recognize beauty when I see it, and this is beautiful,” I said, looking over the block of fabric she’d woven so far.
“Yeah. Too bad I have to take it apart.”
“The whole thing?”
“Just back to here,” she pointed to the spot. “I broke a thread—the mohair, naturally. It’s so difficult to work with. The darn stuff catches on everything. When I tied up the new strand, I didn’t notice it was a shade off.”
A shade off. That was a term I could apply to the murderer. Bull’s family, the contestants, Heather, Sunny. They all seemed like ordinary people, but one of them had the will to kill.
“You can hardly tell. It seems like so much unnecessary work to start over.”
“It’s a gift for my mother-in-law. She’ll notice.” She sang, “One of these things is not like the other.” Then she covered her mouth with her hand. “I didn’t mean it to sound like she’s snooty. She’s a fabric artist, so she’s attuned to colors. It’s intimidating making her gifts. I don’t know why I torture myself.”
I admired a few decorative yarns with sparkles and flags, and then my hostess suggested we get back to the others. With one last longing look at her loom, Toni turned off the lights.
The party was in full swing. Auntie came up and said, “Where have you been? People have been asking me about the investigation. I told them we were this close to cracking the case, with the help of the police, of course.”
“You what?”
“I was just making conversation, and it really helped. People actually wanted my business cards. I ran out.” She beamed at me as if increasing her client base was the reason we came.
Across the room, Sonny Street broke into laughter at something whispered by a woman I recognized as a city council member.
“If one of these people is the murderer,” I whispered, “you may have given them a reason to strangle us with our scarves or whack us on the head with a frying pan.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said without lowering her voice. “You haven’t got any cast iron in your kitchen. The worst that could happen with that cheap cookware you own is we’d get a big headache. And my neck is too short to wear scarves, so I don’t have any.”
“What a relief.”
But I wasn’t relieved. Standing not twenty feet from me was a pretty nice group of people: Natasha, with her dreams of helping the poor; Bull and his family who, in different circumstances, would probably have made good friends. Okay. Acquaintances. Bert was your average guy trying to get ahead in a competitive business, and Heather… I didn’t think I could ever feel warm and fuzzy about Heather.
The not-so-nice part was that one of them most likely murdered an old lady in cold blood. One of them snuck into Fiona Flynn’s bedroom and strangled the life out of her, putting an end to her beauty business dreams. And one of them, an invited guest, had the nerve to kill a cockatoo in my own home. Just like Toni’s troubling mohair, one of these people was a wayward thread, seeming to fit into the group, but on closer examination, not what they seemed.
An image of poor, dead Fiona flashed in front of my eyes, and I reluctantly conceded that I was going to have to do something so awful, so against nature, that I’d probably spend eternity being shunned by my fellow guests in Hell.
Bull jumped at the chance to give Auntie a ride home when I told him I had a migraine. I slipped out of the party and into my car and set out for the Jenkins’ home.
God help me, I was going to dig up that bird and try to read poor, dead Petey.