Page 24 of Murder on Charity Lane

“The great room, yes. Then George said they should be going.” She attempted a watery smile. “Well, he said, ‘Time to pretend we’re leaving,’ because he’s George. Then Pax left with … what’s her name?”

“Sophie Gilman?” Vernon suggested.

“No, the blond one.”

“Angela,” Jane Sheffield said.

“Right. Pax walked her out, and we, the rest of us, followed as far as the foyer. Frank is used to—was used to our long goodbyes, so he headed upstairs.”

“We stood around chatting,” Jane said. “I think maybe CJ brought Helene’s coat?”

“She did.” Helene tugged at the collar of her black embroidered jacket. “I was talking with Sunny and George about local theatre. One of the guests is a playwright.”

“Oh, is she?” Vernon asked.

Helene nodded. “She wrote a murder-mystery play set in Santa Barbara.”

“I’ll have to give that a read.” He looked back to Karina, who was blank-eyed and pale. “So they were in the foyer and you were where?”

“Upstairs with Frank,” Karina said. “CJ was already with him because she thinks she’s his daughter, even though he’d rather that I help him, so I ran upstairs. Then we were saying goodbye and—and…”

She waved her manicured hand, telling him she couldn’t speak, so he said, “Maybe Ms. Sheffield can take over?”

Jane Sheffield straightened as everyone’s gazes turned to her. She was the type of glamorous middle-aged woman who still turned heads. Looked like she should’ve been the wife, but instead she raised funds for international relief.

“Sunny was talking about life extension,” she said in a throaty voice. “His favorite subject. Then what happened? Pax hadn’t returned from the driveway yet, which I remember because I was going to have him help Sunny to his car, and then—we were laughing, we’d had a few drinks. There was a noise in the great room, a sort of crash.”

“A crash?” Vernon asked.

“When I looked later, I saw broken glass. I guess a wine bottle rolled off a shelf and smashed on the floor.”

Vernon took note of that, because you needed to exert serious force to shatter a wine bottle. “And then?”

Jane opened her mouth to continue but Karina spoke first: “That’s when it happened. I was at the top of the stairs with CJ and Frank. Everyone turned to look at the noise, but I looked at Frank instead and that’s when I saw her.”

“What exactly did you see?” Vernon asked.

“CJ. I saw CJ, standing behind Frank. Her face, that stupid winged eyeliner … I can’t forget her expression, she looked eager. She reached out with both hands and shoved him and—he fell, and I heard … the sound and—it was awful. I keep hearing the sound.”

Vernon murmured sympathetically, then considered the men in the room as the other women comforted Karina. He doubted they had anything useful to add. Men tended not to notice details that didn’t affect them personally. So he thanked the widow and went to find the suspect.

Officer Aldwell pointed him to a long rectangular room packed floor to ceiling with vinyl records on built-in shelves. At the far end of the room, fifty or so bottles of expensive booze were displayed behind an impressive bar. A massive stereo covered the other wall, behind gold velvet low-slung couches centered around a black Asian-looking coffee table.

It was Vernon’s perfect living room.

A pale figure huddled miserably on one of the couches. CJ Moore, a tall woman shrinking into herself. Her face looked bloodless and her eyes sunken despite her almost-calligraphic makeup. Sitting there pulling tissues from a box and shredding them. She didn’t seem to notice him; she kept staring at a square window that looked out over the garden. Or that would have, in the daytime. At night, with the room bright, it had turned into a mirror, so maybe she was staring at herself.

She tore a tissue into strips, then pulled out another. She ripped that one—then startled when he approached. She stood suddenly, gawkily, like she wasn’t sure how her body worked. He asked her to sit, then sank into the velvet couch across from her. Made him want to light a joint.

He talked her through the events of the night, which agreed with everyone else’s right until the only moment that mattered.

“I heard glass break in the great room,” CJ Moore said. “I was at the top of the stairs, I guess helicoptering a little?”

“I don’t know what that means, helicoptering.”

“Being a mother hen? That’s what Frank called me. His balance isn’t great, and he’d had a few drinks, um, so standing at the top of the stairs made me nervous. Then the bottle smashed in the great room.”

“The wine bottle?”