Teddy let out a long, low chitter that sounded, for the first time all night, exactly like agreement.
Then she hit a button a few times, frowning. “Wait. Is that a David Yurman bracelet?”
Why did that sound so familiar?
I rushed over to Vivienne and gawked at the screen.
There it was.
The infamous David Yurman.
“That’s Hyacinth Maxwell’s hand!”
Six
“Who the devil is Hyacinth Maxwell?” Taylor asked.
I made eye contact with Vivienne. She’d witnessed the David Yurman display. She could back me up.
“Hyacinth is a girl I went to school with at Sacred Heart. She said hello to me on the front steps tonight. Called me hilarious in that way that means the opposite.” I was pacing, tea sloshing. “She was wearing that bracelet. I saw it. She told me about it, unprompted, like I’d asked. Which I hadn’t.”
“Harper didn’t even know who David Yurman was,” Vivienne said. “I had to let her in on it.”
“Who is he, her boyfriend?” Taylor asked, brow burrowing like he didn’t understand the relevance of any of this.
“That’s exactly what I thought!” I told him, putting my hands on my hips. “Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“It’s a jewelry designer,” Vivienne told the group. “She wanted Harper to know who the designer was.”
“So she has a habit of pointing out her own jewelry,” Reginald said slowly. “Which either means she’s vain, or she wanted witnesses to notice exactly what was on her wrist tonight.”
“That’s either very stupid or very smart,” Taylor said. “Hiding in plain sight. Could be the most clever thing I’ve heard all night.”
I refused to accept that Hyacinth Maxwell was clever. “I vote stupid.”
“Or it’s a coincidence and half the Garden District owns that bracelet,” Allison said, though she didn’t sound like she believed it. “David Yurman isn’t exactly rare in that crowd.”
“That hand knew exactly where it was going and exactly how long it had to be there,” Vivienne said.
“So presumably she assumed if anyone was looking they wouldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. She was an invited guest,” Reginald mused. “She wouldn’t have expected that she was being filmed.”
I looked down at Teddy, who was standing at attention by the parlor door like he had somewhere to be. Which, if his social media accounts were any indication, he just might. Teddy was an up-and-coming skunk.
“We have to go back,” I said.
“Go back where?” Allison’s voice climbed an octave.
“The gala.”
“Harper, a woman just died.”
“Which is exactly why we have to go back. The gala’s still going strong, I’m sure. It hasn’t even been an hour since we left. That man with the microphone said the bar’s staying open, remember? ‘In the spirit she intended.’” I could still hear the tepid applause in my head. “If Hyacinth is still there, I want to see her face when she hears the word homicide. Or died. Or anything. I want to see what she does.”
“That’s not investigating,” Reginald said. “That’s stalking with extra steps.”
“I prefer to think of it as proactive hostessing.”
“No one called this a homicide,” Allison pointed out.
