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I waited for a few seconds more, then finally, Viola dismissed Danny. While Danny walked toward the bar, Viola dipped her head and reviewed the notes she’d taken. The thunder rumbled; the lights flickered. My eyes instinctively focused on the chandelier overhead, as did Viola’s. When I brought my gaze back down, I caught sight of Viola as she dropped the pen she held. As she bent to pick it up, once again, the lights dropped out, and darkness shrouded the room. I expected them to come back on within a few seconds, but they didn’t.
Around me, the silence broke as a few murmurs erupted, and as the lights failed to come on, I heard an uncomfortable laugh. A moment later, I caught a sound that didn’t belong, like someone had dropped a Santa sack filled with laundry onto a table. Fifteen seconds later, the lights returned, and I noticed right away I had another problem to contend with.
“Viola!” I screamed as I rushed toward her. She was lying on the floor on her side, her back to me. Next to her prone body was one of the giant candlesticks from a side table. Even with a cursory glance, I noticed the fresh blood along the bottom edge. I dropped on my knees next to Viola and reached for her neck.
“Thank goodness,” I said as I detected a pulse. I moved my hand from her neck to her chest and felt it rise. Viola and I both exhaled at the same time.
“What happened?” Laurel asked as she kneeled beside me.
“Whacked in the head,” I answered.
I leaned over Viola’s body, intending to turn her onto her back.
“Wait, stop,” Laurel said.
I froze while Laurel did the same things I did, checking Viola’s pulse and then her breathing.
“Leave her the way it is. You there, get something I can put under her head, and get me some water and a compress.”
I thought Laurel was giving me directions, but when I looked up, I spotted Helen Troy rushing away.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Nothing, I got this.”
I stayed out of the way as Laurel checked Viola’s pulse again, then moved her top arm farther out, like Viola was reaching for something in front of her body.
“I don’t want her to throw up and choke,” she explained.
We waited another minute, and Helen returned carrying a bottle of water, a napkin, and a tablecloth.
Laurel opened the bottle, dumped some on the napkin, and checked out Viola’s wound.
“You still have my phone?” she asked.
Without a word, I handed it over. Laurel took it, turned on the flashlight, and pointed it at Viola’s head. “Hold it right there.”
I did as I was told and watched as Laurel dabbed at the wound. “I don’t think this is too bad. It looks like it already stopped bleeding, but I’m going to apply some pressure to make sure.”
“Is she going to be okay?” I asked.
“Beats me. I’m a fiddle player, not an EMT.”
“Where’d you learn to do this? Girl Scouts? Medical training?” I asked, genuinely curious.
Laurel smiled. “Mostly television.” She removed the napkin from Viola’s head and showed it to me. Even with my limited experience, I could tell the wound wasn’t serious.
“When she wakes up, I imagine she’s going to have one nasty headache. And hopefully not a severe concussion.”
“Can you keep an eye on her?” I asked.
“Certainly,” Laurel responded without hesitation.
Satisfied Viola would come through fine, I stood. Around me, I studied the faces of the rest of the people in the room, every eye following every move I made. My eyes dropped to the floor and saw Viola’s pen laying on the ornate Italian marble. I picked it up and did a quick search until I spotted the corner of the cover of the notebook she’d been using under her right heel. With care, I lifted her leg, pulled out the book, and gently set her back down.
I righted myself and looked around. Brantley Wilson had moved to within two feet of me. His hat was askew, as was his quiver, and his left knee, bony and pale, had broken through his tights. Instead of saying anything, he stood staring at me, and after a moment, his foot started tapping out a Morse code message I couldn’t decipher. Eventually, my impatience got the best of me.
“What?” I asked.
Brantley put his hands on his hips and leaned forward, nose turned slightly upward. “What are you going to do?”
The question confused me. “About?”
His right hand broke free, and he swirled his hand at Viola, and then in the general direction of Hawthorne’s covered body. “All this. What do you intend to do about all this?”
“I don’t really understand.”
“I know you were helping her, so now what?”
“You don’t get it. She only wanted me to take names and pictures of the staff, so she didn’t miss anyone. I’m not a police officer, I’m a musician. You saw me up there doing my thing, didn’t you?” I pointed toward the stage for effect.
“But you seem to have experience with what you’re doing. Keep doing it.”
I turned and discovered the speaker was the woman dressed as Dorothy, whose name I had already forgotten. Somewhere she’d misplaced her basket, so I imagined she lost poor Toto somewhere.
“Look, um, Dorothy, I don’t know what you’ve learned, but there’s nothing I can do here.”
It was Loren’s turn, so he stepped forward and spoke. “Bozeman told me the story about how you got him out of a bunch of trouble. He’s told me you’ve solved mysteries before.”
“It’s not like that. This is a police matter, not mine. I’m sure backup is already on the way and will be here in no time.”
Brantley shook his head. “How? No one got a call out. There’s no reason for anyone in the outside world to speculate that anything out of the ordinary has gone on here tonight.”
“I hate to jump in, Codi, but you’re also missing the bigger picture.”
That voice I recognized. A quick turn of my head verified that Bozeman had not only woken from his nap but had placed his feet firmly on the floor and tipped his hat back. He didn’t speak much, but when he did, he commanded attention.
I sighed. “What’s that, Boze?”
Bozeman lifted his arm and swept his finger across everyone in the room. “One of these fine people here is a murderer. Almost two-times over, I reckon.”
I followed the direction of Bozeman’s finger as he did another pass. As I did, I looked each person in the eyes. Then I glanced over at Laurel, who still tended to Viola, and across the room at the shrouded body. Bozeman was right. Someone had not only killed, but attempted to do so a second time. If the power remained shaky all night, chances are there might be more prone bodies on the ballroom floor.
At last, I relented. “Okay. I’ll do it. I’ll keep looking into this. With conditions.”
“Okay. Name them,” Brantley said.
“First. No one leaves or enters this room. Everyone finds a seat and stays put.”
“What about the restroom? I need to go now, in fact,” Frankenstein’s bride said. I’d forgotten her name too, although I was confident it began with an A. Annie, maybe.
She had a good point, so I considered the question for a moment. “Okay. Bathroom breaks excepted, but only one person at a time, and with an escort. Either myself, Laurel, or Bozeman will take you to the bathroom and back.”
“How do we know you weren’t involved?” Danny stepped forward and asked.
To my surprise, Loren fielded the question for me. “Come on, man. You really think that when the lights darkened, one of those musicians, who have met none of you before, put down their instrument, crept across the room in the dark, killed Hawthorne Harris, and then took their place back on stage?”
Danny’s shoulders slumped, followed by his eyes. “Okay, yeah. That seems improbable.”
“More like impossible,” Helen interjected.
“Okay, escorts to the bathroom,” Brantley said. “What else?”
“No more alcohol comes out of the bar tonight. Only sodas and water from here on out. Coffee, if they have it.”
Danny raised his glass and was about to protest when Loren wagged a finger at him in a distinctive no gesture. Danny closed his mouth and set his empty glass on the ground.
“Done,” Brantley said. “And?”
“And everyone stays seated and cooperates. No one refuses to answer my questions.”
“What is all this really going to buy us?” Dracula asked.
One of my first points of business needed to be relearning everyone’s name.
Brantley turned. “Maybe she’ll be able to finger the perpetrator. Is that not good enough?”
“So what?” Dracula’s fake fangs impeded his speech, so he ripped them from his mouth and tossed them on the floor. “So what?” he repeated. “It’s not like anything she gets will be admissible in court, even if she figures out who did it.”
Loren stepped forward. “The benefit is, Claude, if she figures it out, we can hold that person for the authorities so no one else ends up like Viola, or worse, Harris.”
I don’t know if it was Loren’s logic or his impressive size that convinced Claude the vampire to back down, but he did.
“Anything else?” Brantley asked.
I didn’t think of anything at the moment. “That’s it for now. Why doesn’t everyone grab a seat and get comfortable? I’m sure it’s going to be a long night.”
The crowd disbursed, and as a group, they wandered around until each one found a chair. Instead of conversations in small groups like before, everyone seemed fine to be on their own for the moment.
I took a few steps over to Bozeman.
“What’s your plan?” he asked.
“I carry on where Viola left off. Talk to the group, see what I can figure out.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Start by escorting that one woman to the bathroom, and then watch my back for me.”
Bozeman tipped his hat and stood. “You got it.”
“Oh, and Bozeman? Don’t get yourself killed.”
Bozeman shot me a smile that told me not to worry, and he headed toward the bride.
I sat down in Bozeman’s seat and opened the notebook. I expected it to be filled with names, descriptions, random thoughts, or other information I remembered seeing scribbled in my dad’s books. Instead, the notebook was empty except for the first three pages. She’d filled the first page with swirls. I’d seen plenty of swirls like that in my lifetime since I created the same ones when I tested to see if a pen was out of ink.
The second page didn’t contain swirls, but rather squares. I almost pictured the design being made. A large square placed in the center, then two lines dividing it into fourths. Then she’d added more and more squares until it grew to the size of a chessboard, and then, for good measure, she’d penned in even more squares.
The third page, rather than the murderer’s name written in bold letters in the center with arrows pointing to it, contained triangles. I could tell the page started off like the square page did, but she inked in diagonal lines to bisect the squares into triangles. Viola hadn’t completely finished the project, as there were still several squares that were still squares.
“What in the world?” I whispered. “What was this all about?”
It tempted me to tear the pages from the book, but I thought that might give the wrong impression to anyone watching me. I flipped to the fourth page, grabbed my pens, and stood. I knew who I wanted to talk to first.
It didn’t take me long to traverse the ballroom to the bar. Ashley was still manning her post, but Stacy was in a chair a few feet away, looking at something on her phone.
“Would you like a drink?” Ashley asked as I approached. “I can offer you a variety of soft drinks and water.” She lowered her voice so only I could hear her. “I also have a pitcher of iced tea, but honestly, most of the ice in it has melted, so it’s probably pretty diluted by now.”
“I’ll take a bottle of water,” I said.
Ashley handed it over, and I opened the top and drank. I hadn’t realized until that moment how thirsty I was. As I drank, I gave Ashley the once over. Like the servers, she had flowing brown hair, clinched into a ponytail. Unlike the others, it suited her. I could easily picture that ponytail trailing through the back of a baseball cap as she biked or hiked the endless trails in the area. She tugged at the black vest she wore like it constricted her like a python. Even though she looked uncomfortable, she kept her professionalism.
“Lemme guess, you’re here for information, not just the water, correct?” Ashley said as she picked up a bar rag and ran it over the top of the bar, even though I couldn’t see a drop of liquid or stain upon it.
I took another swallow, then nodded. “Can I start by getting your full name, your phone number, and your picture?”
She smiled and asked for the notebook. I complied, and she took a pen from behind her ear, then jotted down her personal details in block letters which were easily readable. I appreciated that. Even with my own writing, I was often sloppy enough that I couldn’t read my own notes. After I snapped her picture, I took the notebook back, added the date and time, and began.
“Where were you when everything happened?” I asked, getting right to the point.
“Right here.”
“The entire night?”
“Yep.”
“You didn’t leave? Go to the bathroom? Run for supplies?”
Ashley smiled and shook her head. “Nope. Stacy is my runner, and I used the facilities before my shift started.”
I didn’t do the math, but it had been several hours since the night began.
“You haven’t moved? You must have really comfortable shoes.”
“It’s all about the mat,” Ashley said.
I was about to ask when she invited me behind the bar. There, underneath Ashley’s feet, was a thick cushioned mat.
“That looks comfortable. You mind if I give it a try?” I asked.
Ashley moved aside, and I took her place behind the bar. Climbing onto the mat was like stepping onto a cloud.
“This is amazing,” I admitted as I moved to my proper side of the bar.
“It is. Heather provided it for us. She’s always watching out for our comfort. I can stand on this thing for an entire shift and not feel any worse for wear by the end of the night.”
“If you didn’t go anywhere, what did you see or hear?” I asked.
“A couple of the girls came around to serve the champagne at the beginning, and after that was gone, the guests started coming to me for drinks.”
“Is it an open or cash bar?”
“Open, with limitations. Hawthorne Harris provided the alcohol I used tonight.”
“He gave it to you himself?”
“No. His assistant did. But I can tell you it’s not the good stuff.”
“What do you mean?”
Ashley reached behind the bar and pulled out four bottles of liquor. She turned the labels so I could read them. Before me, were whiskey, vodka, cognac, and a rum bottle.
“See these? They are all top shelf all the way. This bottle of vodka would normally go for three hundred bucks. The rum, eighteen hundred. The others are also so top shelf I wouldn’t be able to reach them.”
“Okay, so he serves the best booze.”
Ashley shook her head. “No. He doesn’t. These bottles have been married.”
She saw the look of confusion on my face and continued her explanation. She held up the whiskey bottle. “Someone has emptied this bottle of whiskey of the good stuff and replaced it with a brand us commoners would drink.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“Definitely. I’ve been tending bar a long time, and I know my booze.”
“Has anyone else noticed?” I asked.
“If they did, no one has said anything about it.”
“Has anyone drinking too much tonight?”
“Frankenstein has been by several times. If it wasn’t a private party, I would have cut him off a long time ago.”
“Has he been a problem?”
“Not as much as Dracula has.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s only been over twice, but he was gross both times. The first time he asked for my number, the second he pinched Stacy on the bottom. What is it about men? Put them into capes and they turn into Neanderthals.”
“I don’t know the answer to that one, but it isn’t just capes. It’s also blue jeans, cowboy hats, boots, and a million other things. It probably all comes down to the drink, though.”
Ashley nodded. “I’d agree with that.”
“Have you noticed anything else out of the ordinary?”
“Not really. I’ve gone through more wine than anything. Most parties are like that.”
“What about when the lights went out? Did you see anything or anyone?”
“No. The lights went out, gong sounded, lights came on, and you know what happened from there.”
“You saw no one moving around? Anyone who might have approached Hawthorne, or even Viola?”
“No. I wish I could be more help. To be honest, I have horrible night vision, anyway. Once the lights grow dim, I can’t see a thing.”
I had no more questions for her, so I moved on to Stacy. As I got closer, I noticed she was still fiddling with her phone.
“Do you have a cell signal?” I asked.
Stacy looked up at me, back at her phone, then up at me. “Oh. No. I don’t. I’m doing a crossword puzzle offline.”
“Too bad. I was hoping you had contacted the outside world somehow.”
Stacy turned off the phone and shoved it into her pocket. She, too, had long brown hair and wore the same tuxedo as Ashley, although her shirt tails had pulled free and peeked out beneath her vest. Over the course of the night, she’d worked up enough of a sweat to turn the shirt under her arms translucent. Now that I took a good look at her, she looked younger than all the other women I’d talked to that night.
Stacy confirmed my suspicions when she told me she was only nineteen. She had been busy all night running all over the place to keep the bar stocked with booze, beer, wine, and ice. I got Stacy’s contact information and photo and asked her the same questions I’d asked Ashley. She gave me a detailed version of her encounter with Dracula, but other than that, she provided no more information than I’d gotten from Ashley.
Satisfied all of Heather’s people were in the clear, it was time to turn my attention to the big fish in the room.
