A Party to Murder Read online

  Leaping toward the porch steps with Derek in tow, Jamie sensed the mansion looming over them like some gigantic bird of prey. There were three stories of shadowed eaves and dormered windows—some lighted, some dark. The house appeared to be in disrepair. One of the shutters hung at an odd angle while another was missing altogether. The paint on the outer walls had peeled in places all the way down to bare wood, exposing ancient, brittle planks beneath. Far above their heads, with lightning for a backdrop, Jamie had counted no less than six chimneys poking toward the heavens, denoting numerous fireplaces scattered around inside, which told him the house was built before central heating came into vogue.

  The brooding facade sweeping skyward in front of them was broken by a trellised roof jutting out between the first and second floors, sheltering a banistered porch, which was what they were shooting for to get in out of the rain.

  It was a wraparound porch, with chaise lounges, covered for the winter, scattered about. Jamie and Derek scrambled breathless up the front steps and stood shivering and soaked. Derek’s eyes crinkled merrily. He was clearly amused, probably at Jamie’s expense.

  “Your imagination is going crazy,” Derek droned. “I can tell. Just bang on the knocker. I’d like to get out of this infernal rain.”

  A single dim bulb burned over the front door. Jamie studied the door knocker Derek had mentioned. It was brass, as big as a cantaloupe, and shaped like a gargoyle. Perfect. If Jacob Marley’s face suddenly appeared in it, he’d probably have a stroke. Jamie sniffed. “The knocker’s a gargoyle. I don’t like gargoyles.”

  “Bang on it anyway. It won’t bite.”

  Jamie didn’t immediately obey. Instead he started shaking himself off like a wet dog, flapping his arms and stomping the mud from his feet. Derek followed suit.

  While they tried to make themselves presentable, they gazed first left, then right, examining the building sprawled out in front of them. Golden light leaked through ancient lace curtains at either side of the door. Jamie imagined Hercule Poirot, along with some of his closest buddies from the Continent, sipping hot toddies and chomping crumpets inside. In Jamie’s imagination they were being waited on by a stick-up-the-ass butler and two or three liveried flunkies who were dutifully scurrying around doling out goodies while sucking up to the nobility.

  Downton Abbey meets House of Usher meets Friday the 13th. Holy shit.

  “Knock,” Derek groused. “What are you waiting for?”

  Jamie heaved a sigh, looking none too thrilled with being ordered about, nor with the cavalier attitude coming from Derek. Visibly cringing, he grasped the brass knocker. It was cold and nasty to the touch, felt heavy in his hand, and was hanging at chin level smack in front of his face. Trying to ignore his trembling knees, he lifted the brass knocker and let it fall three times, eliciting a bang, bang, bang loud enough to wake the dead. Well, perhaps not the dead, he sincerely hoped before he could stop himself.

  The door knocker sounded like a blacksmith’s hammer pounding on a humongous fucking anvil. Echoes of its racket reverberated off in every direction, all the way out to the trees in the distance. Behind them in the rain, parked among four or five other automobiles they now noticed sitting drenched in various spots under the storm-tossed pines, Derek’s Toyota clicked and wheezed and dripped its way to silence after the ordeal it had endured on the crappy road that led them here. As the door knocker’s third bang echoed down to an eerie stillness, they stood breathless through that instant of anticipation one experiences while standing outside an unfamiliar door waiting for the approach of an answering footfall. Before the footfall came, they heard a woman scream as loud as a siren. The noise erupted from somewhere inside the house.

  Jamie clutched his chest while Derek stumbled backward and would have teetered off the steps if Jamie hadn’t snagged his coat sleeve and snatched him out of danger. A heartbeat later, as they stood dripping, their mouths slack with horror, the door flew open in front of them, making them jump in fear all over again.

  Jamie was so startled he nearly fainted. He didn’t have time to gauge Derek’s reaction because in that same instant, the shadow standing in the doorway, limned with light from behind, reached out and dragged them both inside.

  A moment later, the door slammed shut behind them, sealing them in. There a sea of strangers, each and every one as startled as themselves, stood gaping at the new arrivals.

  “Great,” someone commented wryly. “The merriment continues.”

  THE MAN who had opened the door turned out to be somewhat of a dish. Sun-streaked hair combed straight back off a porcelain-smooth forehead. Black-framed spectacles perched on a movie-idol nose magnified brown, inquisitive eyes. His jutting jawline was sharp enough to slice bread. He was decked out in a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, which Derek thought might not be too over-the-top if he were spending a weekend at Toad Hall. Here in the Southern California boonies, of course, it simply looked pretentious. In spite of the stuffed-shirt apparel, he exuded a fairly sexy persona, Jamie thought, his gaydar beeping like crazy. He wondered idly if the man had a big pretentious dick stuffed in his herringbone slacks, along with a meerschaum pipe cooling in his jacket pocket a la Father Knows Best.

  “Sorry about the scream,” the tweedy man said, but the statement was not directed to either Derek or Jamie. It was aimed at the people standing behind him, each and every one of whom looked as uneasy as Jamie felt. In particular, he directed his words toward the blonde woman standing partway up a long staircase.

  The woman shrugged by way of a halfhearted apology. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to scream. I hate storms. That last bolt of lightning startled me.”

  “Quite all right,” Jamie answered back, as gallant as a knight, although he had to admit the storm was getting on his nerves too. His hormones stopped carbonating at the sight of the sexy guy in tweed long enough to allow him to look vaguely understanding. “I almost never scream,” he added for no particular reason. Hoping to lighten the mood. “And when I do, it’s in a much lower register. Butch, really. Manly, if you know what I mean.”

  Derek bumped him with a hip. “Hairdressers aren’t that manly. Don’t get carried away.”

  Jamie grinned.

  Above the group of people standing around, each with a face more anxious than the next, a pinched, older woman appeared at the top of the stairs. She was as skinny as a rail and looked in desperate need of a cheeseburger and fries.

  The old woman barked out a most uncharitable laugh. “Don’t worry, gay boy,” she snapped at Jamie. “We knew it wasn’t you.”

  Jamie turned to Derek, his expression somewhere between amused and appalled. “Did she call me ‘gay boy’?”

  Derek leaned in close and whispered, “Think of it as a compliment.”

  Jamie blinked. “Oh. Okay, then.” Still smiling, although it was a little less natural than before, he turned back to the crowd still shuffling around in the foyer to see what would happen next. The fussy older woman in need of a decent meal and lessons in how not to be an asshat in social situations gazed down at them from the top of the stairs as if she hoped they would start an argument. Homophobic bitch, Jamie thought, and stuck his tongue out at her, deciding maybe butch wasn’t the way to go after all.

  She sniffed, hoisted her nose in the air, and turned away.

  The woman who had screamed—she looked to be in her midforties—took a firmer grip on the suitcase she clutched in her hand. She descended the last three steps to the foyer and headed for the front door.

  Jamie’s hairstylist sensibilities kicked into high gear as he studied her more closely, and he all but clucked his tongue in sympathy at her appearance. Someone whose cosmetology license should be immediately revoked had bleached the poor woman’s straw-colored hair to within an inch of its life so that it now hung dead around her face. Her bangs were so long she looked to be peering out through a bale of hay. The mere sight of those god-awful brittle bangs flopping across the woman’s n
ose made Jamie’s fingers itch for his scissors and a tub of hydrating conditioner. Industrial strength. When she passed him on her way toward the door, Jamie could see that the back of her hair looked even worse than the front. Poor thing.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Derek asked her politely enough.

  She answered only after yanking the front door open, letting the rain blow in. She turned back long enough to say, “Back to the city where I belong. This storm is intolerable. This house is dusty. There are cobwebs in the corners. I still don’t know who our host is, and I don’t like any of you people. So I’m going home.”

  “Hope you can swim,” Derek said.

  Every head swiveled his way. The woman at the door studied him with worried eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

  Derek stepped closer to Jamie and draped an arm across his shoulders. “I mean the bridge went up in splinters the minute Gay Boy and I drove across it. So if you want to leave, you’ll have to swim through a raging torrent.”

  Tweed Man studied each face in the room in a round-robin sort of way, spinning 360 degrees while he did so, obviously seeking consolation anywhere he could find it. “Surely there’s another road, right?”

  “No,” said the old woman on the stairs, frowning severely. “I don’t believe there is.”

  “I didn’t notice one either,” said a heavyset older man dressed in gray Dickies like a janitor might wear. He had just entered the foyer from a door in the back. Jamie saw a look pass between the man and the old woman. They were obviously a couple. And clearly the service staff. God help them all.

  “Not even a hiking trail,” said a young man leaning on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, whom Jamie had not noticed before. The kid, as Jamie instantly thought of him, was even younger than he and Derek. He wore a leather jacket and boots like a motorcycle rider and looked rather grumpy, as if immensely unhappy to find himself in such a crowd of old farts, which Jamie found a little insulting. His scowl softened when hunky Tweed Man shuffled through the crowd to stand at the young man’s side and slip a hand in his.

  Suddenly Jamie was a little less confused about Tweed Man’s sexual proclivities. Clearly he was gay as a goose. And a lucky goose at that. The kid was a real hottie, and they were clearly a pair.

  “Don’t bother looking. There is no other road out of here.”

  The last statement came from the old woman on the stairs. Only now did Jamie notice she had a mass of gray hair pushed haphazardly into a bun and trapped at the back of her skinny head under a net thick enough to catch lobsters in.

  Her words seemed to dash the last hope of the woman with fried blonde hair. She slammed the front door shut, sealing out the storm, then dropped her suitcase to the floor and dug her fists into her bony hips. Gazing around from one face to the next, saving Derek for last, she all but wailed, “Are you telling me we’re trapped here?”

  DEREK SIGHED and pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket. He dangled it in the air in front of their faces like a farmer tempting a pack of donkeys with a carrot. “Good grief, lady. No need for melodrama. I’ll simply call for assistance. We need to notify the authorities that the bridge is out anyway.”

  Everyone froze, staring at him. Then they relaxed en masse, as if they had all been through this before. Some crossed their arms over their chests, others stared down at their feet while pursing their lips. A few even tried to hide downcast grins as they stared at the floor. The woman at the front door simply tapped her toe impatiently and allowed her eyes to skitter across the ceiling. Finally, she settled her sarcastic gaze on Derek’s face.

  “Try it, then,” she said. “Go ahead. Phone for help. Notify the authorities. We’ll all wait right here.”

  Derek shook his head, wondering what all the fuss was about. He tapped on his cell phone and waited for a signal. Then he waited some more. The phone flashed a single word over and over across the screen.

  …searching… searching… searching….

  Derek gave it a shake. Still nothing happened. He turned to Jamie, helpless, and Jamie heaved a sigh of his own. He dragged his cell phone from his pocket and punched a few keys.

  Derek peered over his shoulder and eyed Jamie’s readout. It showed the same.

  …searching… searching….

  After a few seconds of this, both screens went dark.

  The older man who had appeared out of nowhere at the back of the foyer a moment before—he sported a severe flattop and horn-rimmed glasses—cleared his throat in an officious manner. He carried himself like a crusty old general about to send his troops to war. In other words, there wasn’t much noticeable humor about him.

  He directed his comments to Derek, since Jamie was still poking buttons on his nonresponsive phone. “We’ve been trying to call out ever since we arrived. This must be a dead zone. None of our cell phones could get a signal. Or perhaps it’s the storm. Maybe the towers are down.”

  “Well, doesn’t the house have a landline?” Derek asked.

  The man chewed on his cheek as if he was still processing that information. “No,” he said, giving an astonished shrug as if he still couldn’t believe it. “There is no landline on the premises. Or none that Mrs. Jupp or I could find.” The old woman on the stairs nodded in agreement.

  The proverbial light bulb went on over Derek’s head. He shifted his eyes to Jamie, who was starting to look like he’d just had the same epiphany. “But that means with the bridge out, and with no way to make a call, we really are trapped!”

  “In the boonies, no less!” Jamie amended, looking even more horrified than Derek. He swiveled his head around like a snake and squinted through slitted eyes at the skinny old woman standing on the stairs who’d called him a gay boy. “And under the same roof with her!”

  “Maybe he’s not as dumb as he looks,” the old woman drawled, brushing a speck of lint off her bodice. Her sarcastic glance fell on her husband, who gave Jamie a wicked leer in return.

  “Great,” Jamie mumbled under his breath. “Two homophobes.”

  The blonde woman at the door took a moment to stare from face to face at each of the six other people milling awkwardly about before hoisting her suitcase and clutching it tightly to her chest. Outside, a boom of thunder made her cringe. Real fear flashed in her eyes. Her gaze once again drifted up to the ceiling and out past the roof to the storm beyond. She seemed to sink in upon herself as another grumble sputtered across the heavens.

  Her lips went thin and bloodless, her expression cold. “So what should we do, then? Play charades? Cook up some s’mores? Roast marshmallows and sing ‘Kumbaya’ around the fireplace?”

  No one laughed, and she didn’t look like she expected them to.

  Suddenly businesslike, Derek took Jamie’s hand. “Would someone like to show us to our room?”

  The spinsterish old woman had descended to the bottom of the stairs. There was no welcome in her eyes, simply what appeared to be a weary acceptance of her own fate. “I’m Mrs. Jupp,” she announced formally. “My husband and I will do for you while you’re here. Come along and I’ll show you to your room. I assume you two will be staying together,” she added with a saccharine smile that appeared to be thumbtacked to her face for the sole purpose of hiding a sneer.

  There was something about that smile that Derek didn’t like at all. It made him feel… dirty somehow. And that hurt his feelings. It also made him feel less than socially acceptable. Which pissed him off.

  Apparently Jamie had the same reaction. “I don’t suppose your husband knows how to build a bridge,” he all but snarled.

  Derek offered up a wicked smile, knowing how Jamie loved getting under snooty people’s skin.

  “No,” the woman snapped. “But if you don’t believe me, you can ask him yourself. He’s standing right there, you know.” She tipped her chin in Mr. Jupp’s direction; then she turned to glare up the staircase she had just come down. With a sigh, she began to climb.

  Rather than respond, th
e old man simply turned and walked away.

  With a barely audible “Follow me,” Mrs. Jupp gripped the banister and pulled herself up the staircase at tortoise speed, one agonizing step at a time.

  “So you and your husband are the help,” Derek said, obediently following her bony butt up the stairs. “That means you must know who hired you and who owns this house. You know who invited us here. Who is it?”

  Mrs. Jupp merely continued her glacial advance up the staircase, rather like a freight train chugging up a long, steep hill. Only when she reached the landing did she turn and gaze down at them. “My husband and I don’t know any more than you do,” she said. “And no one has seen the hosts. If they are here, they haven’t made their presence known yet. Our orders were left in written form in the kitchen, and the keys were under the mat. As per mailed instructions.”

  “Well, then, who paid you?” Derek asked. “Was it by check? Good grief, woman, who signed the damn thing?”

  “We were paid through the mail with cash. And please don’t curse. I find it extremely offensive.”

  With that, she turned away once again and headed along a dreary hallway. Half-confused and half-curious to see where they were going and how things would pan out, Derek followed with Jamie’s hand still clutched in his.

  DEREK AND Jamie had one small suitcase between them, and that was mostly filled with Jamie’s blow-dryer and hair products, along with a flat of pancake and a tube of concealer. You never know when a zit might pop up. In matters of looking one’s best, Jamie believed in the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared.

  Derek tossed the carryall onto the bed while Mrs. Jupp stiffly angled her bones back out into the hall before closing the door behind her. They were alone at last.

  “Well, she’s a barrel of laughs,” Jamie grunted when she was gone. He checked his hair in an art deco mirror hanging slightly askew by the bedroom door. Derek’s visage in the mirror, watching him fuss and preen, appeared amused, but Jamie didn’t mind. He liked it when Derek watched him.