Chapter 21

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The two women looked up at me and blinked.

Finally, one of them found her voice. “Janice. Wow. You look great. So different. We didn’t know you were coming.”

“Neither did I. But a last-minute business thing had me in NOLA for a few days, and I figured why not pop over and see what everyone’s accomplished since high school.”

“Right, of course. You didn’t RSVP so we didn’t print you a tag, but I brought some extras just in case…hold on.”

She wrote Janice’s name on a card and slipped it into a plastic sleeve, then handed it to me.

“The tag’s magnetic,” she said. “We don’t want to ruin dresses.”

“Is that bag Chanel?” the other girl asked.

I smiled. “No idea. My boyfriend bought it for me. I just liked the color. Thanks, girls. We’ll catch up later.”

I took the tag and hurried off, leaving the two of them gaping behind me. As soon as I got inside the conference room, I inched around the wall to the darkest spot, grabbing a punch off a table as I went. Then I slipped the name tag into my purse. Based on the lobby girl’s reactions, I figured more people might ask questions if I had it on than not wearing one at all but dressed the part.

Being Janice might not have been the perfect option, but at least I was in and the dress wasn’t short, clingy, or cut too low. That would have attracted attention from men—probably mostly married men—which would have attracted attention from wives. I needed to blend.

I found a group of women standing next to a group of men. The women weren’t wearing tags, so I presumed they were married to students—likely the group of men next to them—but weren’t graduates of that class themselves. Perfect. I’d just sidle up beside them and wait for the opening speech.

One of the women looked over at me as I approached and gave me a friendly nod. “Are you a class wife?”

“No. Actually, I’m a classmate, but I’m afraid I wasn’t a very involved one. I was a painfully shy teen and a bookworm.”

The woman nodded. “Sorry. I just figured since you didn’t have a tag…”

“It’s in my purse. The darn thing keeps falling off and who wants to bend all night in Lycra, right?”

Thank God for Ronald and his vocabulary.

She laughed. “I finally taped my husband’s—he’s Bill Church—do you remember him?”

I shrugged. “A little. I didn’t mingle much back then. I just happened to be in NOLA for business and popped in on a whim. I live in Japan. My name’s Janice, by the way.”

“Oh wow. That’s a flight. You’ll probably win the prize for longest commute to the reunion.”

“Prize? They’re doing prizes?”

“Yes. Around ten o’clock, I think, so those of us with babysitters can see the ceremony without having to hang around until midnight. ”

I nodded and made a mental note to be long gone before ten.

“Attention.”

Brittany’s voice sounded over the PA system and the crowd stopped talking and looked toward the platform at the front of the room.

“Hello, classmates, and welcome to our ten-year reunion. Can you believe it’s been that long?”

She launched into some facts and statistics about the class, and I saw a lot of smiling and eye-rolling, and then she introduced Daniel.

“And here’s your class president, and my husband, Daniel Stout!”

There was a round of applause and some healthy cheering when Daniel took the stage, and I could tell that most people liked him. Or had liked him. From everything I’d heard, that made sense. It sounded as if Daniel had always been a stand-up guy.

I inched past the group of wives to stand between their husbands and a group of men and woman all wearing name tags. If anyone was going to talk smack about Justin, it was going to be his classmates, not their spouses.

“Thank you all for coming,” he said. “It’s good to see so many familiar faces. As you know, Brittany and I still live here, but most of you do not. It’s nice to have an excuse to force you all back into town, even if we all had to lose a bit of hair and muscle to get it.”

Everyone laughed and some men nodded.

Daniel sobered. “I’m afraid that my next announcement isn’t going to be a pleasant one. Our prom king and football team captain, Justin Barbet, passed away earlier this week from anaphylactic shock.”

There were a lot of gasps and wide eyes, and I figured at least 90 percent of the room hadn’t heard about Justin’s death yet.

“Some of the old crew spent that night reminiscing about old times, so I want everyone to know that before his death, Justin was happy, engaged, and as entertaining as he always was. Some people never change, and Justin was one of them. Now he’ll be eternally immortalized as the guy we knew from high school. Let’s have a moment of silence for our lost friend.”

Everyone bowed their heads, and the room went deathly quiet. Daniel held them that way for about ten seconds before coming back on the microphone.

“Now, everyone enjoy the dance. Enjoy each other. It’s what Justin would have wanted. And I am going to kick things off by dancing with my beautiful wife.”

“Ha,” one of the guys near me laughed. “Justin ‘kicked things off’ with his beautiful wife back in high school.”

One of the other guys nodded. “I never understood how they were friends. Daniel was always cool, and Justin was always a jerk. I bet I can count on one hand the people here who are still mourning his death, and it hasn’t even been a minute since we found out.”

“Michael,” the woman next to him admonished. “You shouldn’t talk bad about the man when he just died.”

“You didn’t go to school here and didn’t know him. Trust me, if you had, you would feel the same way I do. The only people he treated worse than boys were girls.”

The other women in the group, all wearing name tags, nodded, and the one who’d spoken out looked slightly embarrassed.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

“Why would you have?” one of the women with a tag said. “But Michael is right. Justin was a horrible teen and I’ve heard he didn’t improve any as an adult. Daniel was right to say he was immortalized as the boy from high school because apparently, he never grew past it.”

“Like father, like son,” another man said. “His old man screwed over so many people he’ll never see outside Angola walls again. Now, who wants to go fishing tomorrow?”

I eased away as they made an obvious shift in subject and slipped in beside other groups and couples, hearing much of the same thing repeated. No one seemed broken up over Justin’s death. Many stated they were surprised he’d made it this long given his drinking habits. Some claimed he was already an alcoholic in high school, and others said running with the fast scene in Miami likely meant he’d moved on to stronger things than drink. It was no wonder he’d eaten the wrong thing. It was bound to happen at some point.

All of which fit with what we’d already learned, but the ramping up of the addiction was a good point. If Justin had moved on to stronger stuff, then he might have made a mistake with food. If there was an autopsy, they would test for illegal drugs—the common ones anyway—and if anything stronger than booze was found, it would bulk up Corndog’s defense.

I sighed. All roads led back to that nonexistent autopsy. And all because Bryce had no intention of doing his job, especially when his buddy could potentially capitalize on Corndog and Petunia’s misfortune. Surely there was something I could do to make that happen, but I had no idea what.

And since there was nothing to be done about it at this moment, and I was already in a dress, I figured I’d better move on to the next round of gossip. This group comprised only women, who barely gave me a glance as I sat at the table next to them with my plate of finger foods and pretended to be reading texts while I listened in on their conversation .

“Well, I bet Amanda didn’t shed any tears over him.”

“I can’t picture Amanda shedding a tear over anything, but yeah, Justin basically stalked and harassed her all of high school.”

“That’s only because he couldn’t have Brittany.”

“Oh, he had Brittany. She just wised up and traded him in for a better model.”

“The right choice isn’t always the exciting one though. Justin was hot.”

“Sure, and the biggest whore in the parish. He literally showed up at my house one night expecting a booty call after he dropped Brittany off from a date. The guy was a total loser.”

“If you were wanting him for a boyfriend, for sure, but if you were just looking for a good romp, he wasn’t a bad option. At least he was always up for everything.”

They all laughed.

“Justin gave Nicole a fair amount of grief too.”

“Well, if Tyler hadn’t been such a wimp, he would have done something about it and maybe won the fair maiden’s hand and all that white knight crap. That guy’s been carrying a torch longer than cave dwellers.”

“I think it’s kind of sweet, but also pathetic. I mean, ten years and the guy still hasn’t made a move, yet he’s still following her around like a pet. I know Nicole’s not here with anyone, but does she have a regular?”

“Not that I know of. I never see anything on her socials anyway. My mom said local gossip was Nicole got hot and heavy with someone in Europe when she went to visit her aunt the summer after graduation and that she refused to come home. That’s why she started college a year later. Maybe she’s still pining over her foreign fling.”

“Justin claimed he hooked up with Nicole back in the day, but I think he was lying. It was just another way to get at Tyler.”

“I never understood why he hated Tyler so much. I thought they were supposed to be friends, of sorts. Justin had always given him grief, but it seemed like one day he simply ratcheted it up by a thousand percent. I always thought it would have made more sense if Justin had hated on Daniel, especially after Brittany took up with him.”

“You didn’t know? Tyler’s dad was the one who turned in Justin’s dad for one of his scams. He’s some finance guru and smelled something stinky in a client’s books. Since the client was out of state, it was a federal thing. Tyler’s dad had a friend at the FBI and dumped it all in their lap, figuring if he found one instance there were others. Took them a couple years to build up this massive case, so we were all graduated and gone before it went to trial. Dude got like eighty years or something.”

“Wow. I had no idea. Jeez, that makes more sense now. I mean, in a Justin-was-a-douche sort of way. Not like Tyler or his dad did anything wrong, but it’s just like Justin to blame everyone but the actual guilty party.”

“His dad screwed a bunch of people out of their life savings. Some had to close their businesses. It was massive. He deserves every one of those years plus more as far as I’m concerned.”

“So the only one of Brittany’s Band that we haven’t talked about is Morgan. I have to say, he got cute.”

“But he’s still just as quiet. I bet he has some ü ber-smart girlfriend who’s just as introverted as he is. She’s probably back at their house writing code that will cure cancer or something.”

“Idiot. You can’t cure cancer with code.”

“Fine, then she’s going to figure out world peace. Whatever. Are you guys ready to dance, because I’ve got to work off a boatload of calories to have more drinks. And those chocolate-covered strawberries are teasing me.”

“Let’s go find our men.”

They all rose as if connected and headed off in search of their dance partners, and I saved the notes I’d made on my phone while they were talking. What a gold mine. I now had motive for all three of our downstairs suspects to have a grudge against Justin. Granted, it sounded as if most everyone who’d ever known him had a reason for a grudge, but the one that really stood out was Tyler. I needed to find out more about the trial that put Justin’s father away.

I walked around for another hour, careful to avoid ‘Brittany’s Band,’ but the more time that passed, there was more drinking and less talking and people didn’t seem to be dwelling on Justin’s death, which pretty much said everything I needed to know about him. Unfortunately, the drinking and passage of time also meant my suspects had split up and it was getting harder to avoid them.

I was just wondering if I should cut out when I felt someone’s gaze on me. I rose and lifted my phone for cover and scanned the room. Across the dance floor from me, I spotted Morgan, talking to one of the women who’d given me the name tag who was looking my way. Then she lifted her arm and pointed at me. Morgan looked and nodded and headed my direction.

Crap!

Of course he wanted to talk to the person who was likely his female counterpart. They had been co-valedictorians, both with perfect GPAs. Morgan had taken a picture with the award. Janice had apparently opted out and only her name and a picture of the plaque had been featured in the yearbook.

I was certain my disguise was great, but masks were easy to remove and if he asked to step outside to catch up, as I assumed was common at this kind of thing, I was pretty sure he would expect the mask to come off. And even if he was so drunk he didn’t recognize me, and even though I was excellent at changing my voice, the hyper-observant Morgan still had a really good chance of figuring out who I was. I’d been avoiding him and Amanda, in particular, for just that reason.

I whirled around and shot out of the ballroom at a clip, dodging people as I went. I glanced back when I reached the door and saw that he was already halfway across the room and closing in fast. I slowed only long enough to yank off my shoes, then ran for the lobby. I was sure it would look strange if he saw me sprinting across the parking lot, but at that point, I didn’t care. Maybe Janice had been odd enough that he wouldn’t give it much thought. But as soon as I hit the lobby, I spotted Amanda standing right in front of the entry doors with a group of people. And there was no way out but straight through them.

Aside from the front desk clerk, who was hidden from the glass doors by fake plants, the lobby was empty. Perfect.

I sprinted across the lobby and vaulted onto the desk, then dropped my shoes next to the clerk, who didn’t so much as blink.

“I’ll be back for those later,” I said, as I leaped for the second-floor balcony.

I grabbed the rail and pulled myself up, then flipped over and bolted into the hallway. I paused only long enough to drag in a breath before peering down. Morgan came hurrying out of the hallway and stopped in the middle of the lobby, frowning as he checked every direction. I ducked back around the corner of the wall and waited as his gaze went up.

“Did you see a woman wearing a purple dress come through here?” I heard him ask .

“Yeah,” the clerk said, sounding completely bored. “About a hundred of them. It’s a theme color of your party.”

“I meant just now, did a woman come through here?”

“Sorry, I was doing paperwork. But people have been through here all night.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

I peered out again and saw him give the lobby one more glance, then he must have spotted Amanda outside, so he headed for the doors.

“You’re in the clear,” the desk clerk said. “And I saw absolutely nothing—but nothing was impressive. Would have been more impressive in the heels though.”

I leaned over the railing and gave him a smile. “You ever think of joining the CIA? You have the nerves for it.”

“Honey, not if they’re going to put me in a straight cut. I’m already curveless enough. And that’s not nerves. That’s numb. That move of yours didn’t budge the needle compared to what I found going on in housekeeping when I came on shift. And last month we had a heavy metal band’s bus break down right outside of town. The hotel insisted on paying for therapy. What does that tell you?”

“Hmmmm.”

“Do you want me to toss these shoes up? God, they’re gorgeous. I might reconsider a straight cut if I got a pair of these.”

He gave them a wistful look and I motioned for them.

“I owe you,” I said as I caught the shoes.

He put one hand up, already looking back down at his paperwork. I peered out to see if Amanda and company were still outside. They were, but it looked as if the party was breaking up. Amanda gave the other people a wave and she and Morgan headed across the parking lot toward the diner across the street. I figured Brittany and Daniel were there for the duration of the party given that she was in charge, so that left Nicole and Tyler unaccounted for, but the odds were decent that Ida Belle and Gertie could get back to the room without being seen. And even though we had a perfectly good reason for being there, I was afraid a few more run-ins might have the extremely perceptive Amanda taking a harder look.

I pulled out my phone and called Ida Belle, anxious to compare notes. She answered on the first ring.

“It’s gone dead here,” she said. “Haven’t seen anyone in almost thirty minutes. I don’t think there’s a lot of smokers in that generation, and all the people coming outside to gossip about Justin did it right after the thing started.”

“Yeah, I think they got it over with and now they’re mostly concentrating on drinking.”

“Can we come back?” Gertie asked. “My butt is numb and I have to pee.”

“I’m getting a little stiff myself,” Ida Belle said.

“Yeah, I’ve called it as well. Pull around to the side and use that door.”

“You sure?” Ida Belle asked.

“Yeah. It’s closer to the elevator. Amanda and Morgan just headed across the street to that diner, and my guess is Brittany and Daniel are at the event for the duration, so odds of you being seen are low. I’ll meet you upstairs.”

“Awesome!” Gertie said. “I hear leftovers calling me.”

I yanked off the mask and headed for the stairs, not in a rush since none of the friends were likely to be walking the stairwell, especially the ones in heels. When I reached our room, I hurried to make some notes on my laptop. Then I pulled the food containers out of the mini fridge and did an assessment. We probably had enough to cover us all for dinner, but worst case, I’d spotted a menu for Chinese delivery in the desk drawer, so at least we had a backup plan in case we were all hungry. By the time I finished, ten minutes had passed since my phone call but they hadn’t yet appeared.

My phone rang and I saw Gertie’s number in the display.

“Houston, we have a problem,” she said.

“What kind of problem?”

“We’ve fallen and we can’t get up.”

“Who’s fallen? Where? And why can’t you get up?”

“Ida Belle and I have fallen. And just so you don’t go jumping to conclusions, she fell first. I fell trying to help her up and twisted my knee again.”

“Where are you?”

“In the side parking lot. Back row. You might want to come get us in case a fire starts.”

“Why would a fire start?”

“Hey, stuff happens, but we’re both laid out in the fire lane, so it would be a problem.”

I pulled on my tennis shoes and hurried down the stairs, then burst out the side door and scanned the parking lot. I spotted Ida Belle’s SUV and ran over. Sure enough, they were both sitting on the pavement as if they were preparing for a picnic, but without a blanket or food.

“What happened?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

“It was the strangest thing,” Ida Belle said. “I stepped out of the SUV and as soon as my feet hit the ground, my legs just collapsed. I can’t even feel them. My knee’s already swelling, and I can’t feel a darn thing. Look!”

She pulled up her pants and pressed her finger against a knot and didn’t so much as flinch. I started to panic. I’d seen something like it before, but usually when someone had been shot and they were paralyzed. Sometimes temporarily. Sometimes permanently.

“How can I not feel that?” Ida Belle said.

Gertie was uncharacteristically quiet, and when I looked over at her, she widened her eyes and shrugged. “Maybe it’s a pinched nerve from all that sitting.”

“I sit all the time,” Ida Belle said. “Why the heck would a couple hours pinch a nerve? And I’ve never heard of a pinched nerve eliminating pain. It usually causes pain.”

I gave Gertie a hard look. “I don’t suppose you shared Nora’s stash with Ida Belle, did you?”

“No!” Gertie insisted. “I swear I didn’t offer a thing.”

“And I wouldn’t have taken it if she did,” Ida Belle said. “The only thing I’ve had is a bottle of water, and only half at that. Didn’t know how long I’d be out here.”

I narrowed my eyes at Gertie. Something wasn’t right, and whatever it was, Gertie was right in the thick of it.

“You spiked your water with Nora’s latest brew, didn’t you?” I asked her. “And then you got the bottles mixed up and Ida Belle drank it.”

Ida Belle whipped her head around to stare at Gertie, who turned to stare at the fence, answering my question.

Ida Belle threw her hands in the air. “Are you trying to kill me? What if my heart had stopped instead of my legs? And what the heck am I supposed to do now? I can’t sit here all night, and Fortune can’t carry us to the room.”

“I think you should go to the hospital,” I said.

“Over my dead body,” Ida Belle said, and I was quite certain she meant exactly that.

She glared at Gertie. “You just wait until I can move my legs again. I’m going to put one right up?—”

“Give me a minute,” I said and ran back into the hotel.

I hurried to the lobby, which was thankfully clear, and up to the desk clerk. “I have a medical emergency,” I said. “My two old aunts have fallen in the parking lot, and I can’t get them up. ”

“Do you want me to call 911?” he asked without so much as a raised eyebrow.

“No. I just need to get them to my room and they’ll be fine. I don’t suppose you have a wheelchair, do you?”

“This isn’t a hospital, honey.”

“What about your office chair?”

He frowned. “What about it?”

“Can I borrow it? And the other one? And you? That way I could get both of them out of the fire lane at the same time…just in case you had a fire.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time all that happened. What the hell. I’m due for a break anyway.” He looked over at another clerk who’d walked up as I was explaining the situation. “Handle this while I go play orderly, will you?”

Clerk Two’s eyes widened. “If they’ve fallen in the fire lane?—”

“Do I need to remind you?” Clerk One interrupted.

Clerk Two shook his head. “Make it happen. We didn’t see anything. We don’t know anything.”

Clerk One dragged the chairs from behind the desk. “Lead the way.”

Gertie cheered when she saw the office chairs. Ida Belle just sighed. I was able to get Gertie into one by myself because she still had one good leg, but it took both me and the clerk to get Ida Belle in the other. Much to her dismay.

“The service elevator is down the next hall,” he said as we pushed. “It will be easier to get the chairs into than the guest one.”

“Good. Maybe fewer people will see my humiliation,” Ida Belle muttered and cut her eyes at Gertie.

A couple of people approached us in the hallway, so I moved behind the clerk to allow them by. They gave us curious looks, but no one appeared interested in asking questions, which was always the best course of action when viewing something odd in Louisiana. We were almost to the hallway when the clerk suddenly whirled around, almost knocking me over, and took off running in the opposite direction.

I had absolutely no idea what was up, but a general rule to follow is if someone who has no reason to run is running, you should run too. So I whirled around and took off after him. He skidded on the floor to get the chair around the corner and into a hallway we’d passed, and for a second I thought he and Ida Belle both were going to go sprawling. But he managed to collect himself and I followed him around the corner, glancing back as I went.

And that’s when I saw Morgan coming down the hall.

Good. God.