Killer Cocktail by Sheryl J. Anderson Page A

fortunately not too close to any one group. “Someone stole her ring? Someone killed her to steal her ring? That’s crazy. Is that what happened?” I could see in his eyes a moment of elation when everything made sense, but they quickly clouded over again with confusion.
“But what idiot would take her diamond and leave the emeralds behind?”
    “That’s not what happened. Her engagement ring was in the wastebasket in your bedroom. Nelson found it this morning.”
    David lurched away from me, heading toward the beach. I stayed with him, though I understood his desire to walk away from everything about now. “Whered you leave her?”
    “Is this an interrogation?” The idea seemed to both amuse and infuriate him. He stopped clumsily and turned on me, his face pale except for the bags under his eyes. “You going for a scoop, Molly?”
    “Not at all.”
    “You’re not working on a story.”
    “No.” Eileen had called, but I hadn’t accepted, so I wasn’t even lying, which was always nice.
    David glanced back across the lawn from whence we’d come. “My sister put you up to this. The things you let her do to you.” He shook his head as though I were suddenly the one under investigation.
    “Excuse me?”
    “C’mon. Craig Fairchild.”
    I flinched at the memory immediately, but it took me a moment to remember that David had also attended that horror of a cocktail party. “One blind date from hell doesn’t constitute a pattern of abuse.”
    “He vomited on the caviar.”
    “Which has nothing to do with what we’re talking about.”
    “Except Tricia’s ideas aren’t always the best. She can ask me her stupid questions herself. I didn’t kill Lisbet.”
    “I know that, David,” I said to placate him.
    It didn’t work. “Bullshit. You suspect me just like everyone
else around here suspects me. My own parents can’t even look me in the eye. Everybody’s figuring, ‘Aw, man, David went off the deep end and now Lisbet’s dead.’”
    I expected him to lurch away again, but he vibrated in front of me, waiting for some sort of response. “Why would people expect you to go off the deep end?” I’d seen David rowdy, but never violent.
    “I’ve got a temper. So what. I didn’t kill her.”
    “Make her mad enough to take her ring off?”
    David took a deep breath, as though he could suck back in all the energy his anger was radiating out. “You saw the … performance. She was a mess. It was embarrassing and you do not do that to my parents. I had to go upstairs and tell her to get a grip. Lisbet went off on me ‘commanding’ her, threw me out of the bedroom. I left. Took a long walk. When I came back, she wasn’t in the room. I looked all over and finally found her—” His voice cracked as he groped for the words.
    I shook my head to let him know he didn’t have to continue. “You left her alone in the room. Wearing the ring.”
    “And about to pass out, I thought. I figured I’d see her in the morning, moaning for coffee and sunglasses, not …” He screwed his eyes shut and shook his head vigorously, wanting to erase the image of Lisbet in the pool. I waited, trying to show respect for his pain and also trying to figure out what piece of the puzzle to pursue next. Suddenly, he grabbed my upper arm hard and pulled me tight against him. “Figure out who did this so I can get to them first.”
    The sudden ferocity of his tone was alarming. “Stop it.”
    “David, let go of her, people are watching.” Tricia had glided across the grass to warn us. As I turned to look at her, I could see the mosaic of bunched people laid out across the lawn, with at least half of them turned to peer at David.
And me. But David was the one who’d gotten angry and the one who could least afford that sort of public display at the moment.
    David released my arm. “You’re not even sure I’m innocent.”
    “Don’t get paranoid,” I said quietly, trying to imbue the words with a moral surety I didn’t