It was safe to say that Allison had struggled the most with the weekend’s events. Evelyn’s death. Was that empathy or guilt? Guilt because she’d been a party crasher or because she’d murdered Evelyn herself?
She knew how to research for her fiction works. Maybe she’d researched spring mechanisms.
Vivienne arrived last, camera already up, sweeping the table in one slow pan before she set it down and reached for a beignet. "Magnolias. Cute. Very on-brand for a haunted house."
"I'm going for Sunday wholesome," I said. "Séances are for Saturday night."
“That’s what we should have done,” Allison said, perking up. “We should have conducted a séance last night and asked Evelyn who killed her!”
“Poppycock,” was Taylor’s response.
I had to agree with Taylor on that one.
“I don’t think anyone should mess with the spiritual realm,” Vivienne said. “There are forces we don’t understand.”
I nodded.
Reginald made a sound of distress. "You have a skunk currently attempting to climb the buffet."
I turned around. Teddy had gotten one paw up onto the lower shelf of the sideboard and was eyeing the eggs Sardou with his nose twitching.
"Absolutely not," I told him. “Those took me way too long to make.”
He gave me a long, unbothered blink and climbed back down, choosing instead to station himself under my chair, which I recognized as a tactical retreat rather than a surrender.
I sat, poured my coffee, and got to work.
Casually.
You know. My strong suit. I could just envision Hollis rolling his eyes right now.
The trick was to let the questions arrive sideways, tucked in between the bubbly and the small talk, so nobody noticed they’d revealed too much until they were already halfway through answering.
Taylor made it easy. Taylor always made it easy, mostly because he had exactly zero filter. And he liked to drink.
"You seem chipper," I said, watching him demolish his third beignet.
"I got a call this morning." He said it around a mouthful of powdered sugar, which meant it landed more like I gah a cah dis mohnin, with a sprinkle of powdered sugar with each word. He swallowed, took a fortifying gulp of mimosa, and tried again. "The lab results came back on the bourbon. On all of it. The batch that was poured at the gala, the reserve stock, the barrel samples they pulled from my truck. Clean. Completely clean. No contamination, no additives, nothing but bourbon being exactly as much bourbon as it's supposed to be. So no one can blame me for a ding dang thing that happened at that gala."
“You were worried about that?” Vivienne asked. “What were you worried about exactly?”
“Poison! All that talk about mint leaves and foaming at the mouth and whatnot, had to make sure it was all squeaky clean. My bourbon is just damn good bourbon.”
I wasn’t sure anyone had said anything about foaming at the mouth but Taylor did look genuinely relieved. Was that because he had just been worried about his business or because he thought he’d gotten away with murder?
"That's wonderful news," Allison said, and sounded like she meant it.
"It is wonderful news," Taylor agreed, with the fervor of a man who'd been carrying something heavy and had just set it down. "Do you know what I've been picturing since Thursday? Headlines. Lawsuits. Some poor intern at Afterlife Spirits fielding calls asking if our bourbon is, quote, 'the poison one.'”
“That seems rather hard to believe, doesn’t it?” Allison asked. “Poison is always referred to as a woman’s weapon.”
“Well, obviously,” Taylor said. “That was a woman’s hand, wasn’t it? But if my bourbon was used as a vehicle for some nut job’s poison, it’s guilt by association. I haven't slept a wink the last two nights."
Except maybe when he’d been passed out on the terrace at the gala.
"You've slept plenty," Reginald said, from behind his newspaper. "I've heard you snoring through two walls." He didn’t sound like he cared one more or the other. He was just stating facts.
“Snoring indicates restless sleep, Reginald. Tonight will be a whole different story.”
