The Diva Haunts the House (35 page)

Suddenly I didn’t feel quite so smug. That sounded like Faye. I chuckled. “You almost had me. Someone told you that Faye threw a lot of parties.”

“Okay, yes. Wanda disclosed that, but she’s really here. I’m seeing her. When she’s not playing hostess, she hovers around June.”

Karl snorted. “What nonsense. It’s a pity that you prey on vulnerable people and take their money.”

Madame Poisson didn’t flinch. “Is it nonsense? How can you be so sure?” She must have been used to convincing nonbelievers because she regained her composure quickly, and I got the feeling she was on familiar territory. “Were you good friends with Patrick?”

“I knew him socially.” Karl resumed his supercilious smile.

“That explains why he came in here with you.”

“That’s not funny!” Karl stormed off toward the living room, but I noticed that he kept looking over his shoulder. “Maggie, it’s time to go.”

I struggled not to laugh out loud. “I believe you’ve scared him.”

“Serves him right, though he does have the most wonderful liquor. A lot of nonbelievers are easily shaken. They have their doubts. You know, mediums help many people. We put their hearts and minds at rest about their loved ones in the great beyond. We even bring them closure when they have unfinished business with the dearly departed.”

Maggie rushed at Madame Poisson. “I don’t wish to pressure you, but I fear Karl has become impatient. Could we try to contact Patrick one last time? Please?”

“Yes, dear, of course.” Madame Poisson followed Maggie back to the circle in the living room and took her place.

When I sat down and joined hands with Bernie and Jen again, Madame began to hum.

She stopped and muttered, “Good heavens! What are you doing? I don’t know what that means. Charades? We have to play ghost charades? Okay, look, I watched
Ghost
about fifty times, but this isn’t anything like that. You’re going to have to give me some help.”

Maggie appeared to be the only one with her eyes closed. “Please, Patrick. Tell us the name of the vampire!”

“Aha. Good,” said Madame Poisson. “First name. No? First word? You look like you’re doing the
YMCA
dance. How about this? I’ll ask questions and you answer by knocking. Once for yes, twice for no.”

She cleared her throat. “Was it a man?”

Mars and Jen broke into smiles. We waited for a response, everyone except Maggie looking around as though we expected to see spirits.

To my complete amazement, we heard a tiny ping in the sunroom.

Mars leaped to his feet.

Madame Poisson motioned him to sit. “Do not disturb the spirits. Is he here with us tonight?”

I found myself holding my breath. When we heard another ping in the sunroom, Bernie leaned over and whispered, “How is she doing that?”

I shrugged. I had no idea. Even worse, only nine of the people sitting in my living room were men, and I could eliminate everyone except Leon, Dash, Ray, Karl, and, I supposed, Blake. Of course, we all knew that the pings didn’t mean anything. Still, they were very odd . . .

Madame Poisson breathed heavily. She swayed ever so gently, her eyes closed. Beads of perspiration broke out on her brow, she lifted a hand, her head tilted back, and she slid from her chair onto the floor with a
thump.

“Madame Poisson!” Wanda flew to her side.

I rushed to them. “Is this part of the act?” I realized that was a stupid question right away. No one could perspire on command.

“I’m calling an ambulance,” said Nina, borrowing Humphrey’s cell phone.

She’d probably had too much to drink, but to be on the safe side, an ambulance might be a good idea. “What’s in your flask, Karl?”

He folded his arms over his jacket as though protecting it. The smug grin returned. “Flask?”

He had to be kidding. “Yes, you poured something into Madame’s drink.”

In spite of her glitzy outfit, Wong’s police persona took over. “There’s not a person here who didn’t see you pouring a liquid from your flask.”

“Just a little booze, honey. Nothing that would make her swoon. Unless, of course, she’s delirious about me.”

He might have intended it as a joke, but his timing couldn’t have been worse. Madame Poisson struggled for breath.

“Hand over the flask. Didn’t Frank pour something in it outside?” Bernie held out his hand. “The doctors will need to analyze it.”

The smug smile left Karl’s face, and he appeared frightened. He turned the flask over to Bernie. “It’s supposed to be absinthe. But maybe that scumbag did pour something else in there. Maybe he wanted to harm me!” He gripped the back of a chair and eased into it, as though he no longer had the strength to stand.

“I thought you were friends,” said Maggie.

Karl’s head turned slowly as he looked up at her. “I can’t believe this. But maybe he’s jealous of our relationship and wanted me out of the way—maybe he got rid of Patrick, too.”

Maggie stumbled backward, but Dash was quick to catch her before she fell. “No! That can’t be right.”

The door knocker sounded, and I rushed to the foyer. EMTs flooded into my living room. Bernie promptly turned the poisonous flask over to them. I shooed the guests out to give Madame Poisson a bit of privacy. In moments, they had loaded her onto a gurney. A hush fell over us as they rolled her out to the ambulance.

A crash blasted through the dead air. I shot along the hallway to the back of the house. In the sunroom, Vegas and Blake clutched each other but stared in shocked silence at shattered glass littering the floor. Cold air blew through a gaping hole in a panel of glass in the sunroom.

Vegas screamed like she’d seen Viktor.

On the opposite side of the gaping hole, a vampire bared his teeth at us. I recoiled. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that the vicious mask looking in at us was the very same one I had seen on the vampire who fled the scene of Patrick’s murder.

The vampire turned and ran into the dark recesses of my backyard. Daisy barked at the door to be let out. I considered chasing the vampire, but the recollection of my previous encounter came flooding back. The last thing I wanted was to be attacked again. “Nina!”

“Right behind you, darlin’.”

“Would you please corral Daisy and Mochie in a bedroom until we get this cleaned up?”

She coaxed Daisy away. My heart pounded as I raced through the house, looking for the suspects. Ray was offering to drive Wanda and June to the hospital so they could be with Madame Poisson. Outside, Wolf had arrived and appeared to be questioning Karl. Dash comforted Maggie in the kitchen, and Leon asked me for a dustpan. So much for the list of suspects. Karl had to be right. The only person not accounted for was Frank.

I returned to the sunroom, where Bernie, Mars, Leon, and Humphrey were busy cleaning up glass shards.

Bernie handed me a plant. “We’re supposing this was thrown at the window. The shards of its pot are scattered about the floor.”

The plant bore one flower of three delicately striped leaves and a podlike stamen in the center. “Is this an orchid?”

Maggie’s voice came from behind me. “
Dracula vampira
.” She refused to touch it. “It’s a vampire orchid.”

“It had to be Frank. I’ll be right back to help clean up this mess.” I carried the flower to the front door. The ambulance pulled away, leaving Wong and Wolf on the sidewalk in a discussion. I joined them and turned the flower over to Wolf, explaining what happened. “I guess Frank is the killer after all. Everyone else was here. I’m positive that the person who hurled this through the window was wearing the same mask as Patrick’s vampire. There are probably lots of those masks, but what are the odds that someone would wear an identical mask to commit a random act of vandalism and pick my house?”

Wolf studied the flower, but I could see that he was deep in thought. “If Frank poisoned the absinthe, why would he come back here and throw a vampire orchid at your house? I hear you’re one of the witnesses who saw Frank pouring a liquid into Karl’s flask?”

I nodded. “Mars, Bernie, and me.”

Wolf sighed. “Mars is always in the picture, isn’t he? I should have come to this party. I’ve never been to a séance.” He leaned over to kiss my cheek. “I’m heading up to Frank’s house. This should be interesting.”

I spent the next fifteen minutes saying good night to everyone. Maggie seemed disappointed that Karl was driving her home. Dana and Dash split the job of delivering Jen’s young friends to their homes. Natasha put her foot down and insisted Mars accompany her to their house. By the time I shut the front door and locked it, only Jen, Vegas, and Lilly remained. They dragged off to bed, exhausted.

I puttered around the kitchen, cleaning up and thinking about what Wolf had said. If Frank poisoned Karl, why would he come back and throw a flowerpot at my house? Wouldn’t he have the good sense to stay away and wait for the phone call that Karl was in the hospital or dead? I peered out the window in the hope Wolf might come back to tell me what had happened. At three in the morning, though, I just didn’t have enough steam left in me to stay up and wait. I checked to be sure all the doors were locked and went up to bed with Daisy and Mochie.

THIRTY-TWO

We all slept late on November first. I lounged in bed for a few minutes, until I heard faint cackling. I didn’t know how Madame Poisson had accomplished that the night before, but I couldn’t take chances. There might be someone in the kitchen.

I walked down the stairs, trying to avoid the creakier parts. Peeking in the kitchen, I didn’t see anyone except Daisy and Mochie. I made a quick tour of the downstairs. Nothing was out of place.

I made a pot of strong tea, and when I was pulling eggs out of the fridge to make a hollandaise sauce for eggs Benedict, the cackling began again behind me. I whipped around. Mochie sat beside the cackling bowl. When it stopped, he gingerly inserted a paw into the bowl, just far enough to make the hand move and set off the cackling again. I swung him up in the air, laughing, then nuzzled his face.

Looking up at Faye’s portrait over my fireplace, I said, “Well, that was some party last night. If you were there, I hope you had fun.”

Carrying a steaming mug of tea, I accompanied Daisy to the backyard. She snuffled where Mars, Bernie, and I had hidden behind the potting shed, as well as by the gate, where Frank had poured poison into Karl’s flask. I returned to the kitchen and added shallots and white wine to a pot to reduce, but no matter what, my thoughts returned to Frank. Had he really been so obsessed with Maggie that he felt compelled to kill his rivals? He’d attended Natasha’s party dressed as a vampire. He must have stashed the mask somewhere that night, or dashed home to get it. The girls and I had the bad luck to come upon him right after he murdered Patrick. He took off and returned later to attack me. He must have feared I could identify him.

But why had he claimed that
he’d
been attacked? Why had he jumped into the casket at the haunted house and adhered a leach to himself? That seemed peculiar. Had he thought it would throw suspicion on someone else? Wouldn’t he have been afraid of suffocating in the casket? It didn’t make sense that he returned to throw the vampire orchid through my window, either. And what about his conversation in my yard with Karl? Did he see Bernie, Mars, and me watching? If that was the case, why did he pour the poison liquid into Karl’s flask? Why wouldn’t he have said he didn’t have any or made some other excuse?

I separated three eggs into bowls and whisked the yolks. There were too many things that didn’t make sense. The more I thought about it, though, the more I concluded that someone wanted to scare Maggie. Even Blake had thought he could use a vampire costume to frighten his mother back into his father’s arms. Whoever killed Patrick and left the bite on his neck must have known about Maggie’s fear of vampires. “He certainly didn’t love her, though. It was cruel to manipulate Maggie through her fear,” I muttered.

Jen yawned as she entered the kitchen. Daisy ran to her, wagging her tail. Jen petted Daisy but made a point of wrapping her arms around me. “Thanks for the party, and for not sending me away. This was the most exciting birthday I’ve ever had! Some of the kids who were here last night have been texting about the séance and the poison. Everybody thinks I’m really cool.”

“Tea? Are Vegas and Lilly still asleep?” I poured tea into a mug for her.

“Yes, and it’s a good thing. Vegas is going to be plenty mad when she gets up.”

“Did something happen?”

“Heather texted everyone about Blake kissing a flapper bimbo in the sunroom last night. I don’t know why she’s so mean. She’s pretty and smart and has everything. Vegas says she’s the kid that sets the trends all the others copy at school—you know, designer clothes and all that stuff. She could have any boy she wants, except for Blake.”

I grinned since Jen and I were both wearing comfy, antidesigner flannel pajamas. “Sometimes appearances are misleading. The truth is that Heather’s father didn’t inherit the business he thought he would receive. It was sold, and Heather’s mother took half the money, divorced Karl, and moved away. Karl pretends to be a doting dad, but Heather is alone a lot, sometimes all night long. We really ought to feel sorry for her. I suspect that she’s often mean to get attention.”