Fettucini was piled with morsels of lobster. The french fries were scattered with herbs and cheese, and slow-roasted pork was sliced to order and soft as butter and twice as fragrant. All the elegant, thin women who lived on salads tucked in, saving room for the desserts, a pyramid of chocolate and cream profiteroles.
He had put on the great all-American barbecue when everybody had expected something fancier, and I saw he was very much enjoying the astonished looks on his guests’ faces when they inspected the serving tables, trimmed with orange and yellow unscented marigolds and purple pansies and other common or garden flowers, not the expected orchids and roses flown in from South America. First came the looks of shock. Then the frowns of worry that all was not correct, then the murmurs of delight as compliments came his way. Somehow, it all just worked.
Of course his guests were used to the best, that’s why they were here. Many of them the Boss did not even know; his party planner had a list of accessible people who were always up for freebie top-drawer events, and who looked good and had the right clothes to qualify.
“But how wonderful,” I said as Chad and I inspected the lavish spread. “And how beautiful it all looks, so simple and pretty, like a real back garden on the Fourth of July.”
The Boss smiled at me, pleased at the compliment, but Chad was not looking at the buffet.
“Will you excuse me for a moment?” he said. “I need to check something.”
I wondered what it was he needed to check so urgently. Then I remembered he was keeping an eye out for Verity.
I excused myself and edged through the perfumed crowd, aware that the women were eyeing me. They’d seen me talking to the Boss; he was the prime catch and any one of them—the unaccompanied ones anyway and probably some of the married ones too—would like to catch that “catch.”
I caught up to Chad as he was coming back from the house.
“She’s not there,” he said shortly.
“But I could swear I saw her go in.”
“And so did I.”
“I mean, I just thought, well, a bathroom break, you know.…”
“She’s not in the bathroom. Not in any bathroom. There’s staff everywhere, guarding the doors to all the rooms so nobody can make off with the silver, I guess. They all claim not to have seen any woman of her description. I even checked with the one in charge of the ladies’ room, who threw me out and said I had no right to be in there. Well, of course I didn’t, but she had not seen Verity either. What worries me, Mirabella, is that we both know she’d had too much to drink and that she went into the house. And now everybody is saying she did not. What the fuck is going on?”
He glared at me like it was my fault; that deep penetrating look that earlier I had taken as interest, or lust, or love at first sight, something along those lines. Obviously this was not the case.
“Nothing could have happened to her,” I said. “I mean, look at this place, there’s enough armed guards to stop a tank attack. And a girl doesn’t just get lost at a grand party like this.”
“Well, it seems this girl has gone missing at this grand party, and I’m going to ask the man in charge about it.”
I grabbed his arm. “You think something has happened to Verity? But why should anything happen to her?”
He shook his head. “Mirabella, your own Aunt Jolly was murdered, almost next door, in your Villa Romantica, and you are asking why I am worried that Verity disappeared from the party? I come from a different world. I see danger behind me, in front of me, over my head, everywhere I go. I’ve learned to trust my gut when I feel something’s wrong and that’s probably why I’m alive today. And trust me when I say something is wrong here.”
I thought of Aunt Jolly’s still-unexplained and violent death, of my lovely, unworldly aunt, who in fact was so like Verity in her nature they might have been related. Aunt Jolly had been killed. A violent attacker was still on the loose. The Colonel, who I could see across the yard, smart in what must be some kind of dress uniform and attractive as all get-out and didn’t he know it, was chatting up a group of women who seemed attached to his every word. Even he had failed to find the killer.
Beyond the magic circle of light around the villa, the hills loomed dark. Not a light shone past our enchanted surroundings. The sheer blackness was foreboding and I shivered. Anybody might be out there, watching.
I saw Chad prowling the edges of the party crowd. The music played on, ice tinkled in glasses, laughter rang out, chatter and gossip, women admiring each other’s dresses, stilettos dangling from their hands, bare feet cool on the grass. Everything looked normal.
I hurried across the lawn to where the Colonel stood in his merry group of admirers, grabbed his arm, and said, “I need you.”
The women glanced at each other, smiling at my forwardness, my deliberate cutting out of anyone else. “Bitch,” I heard someone mutter as with my hand still on his arm, I dragged him to a quieter place, beyond the reach of the music and the banter and the drinkers.
“It’s Verity,” I said. “Verity, you remember?”