Chapter 12
Damn! The woman was obnoxious. Moore had invited the guest from hell.
Jennifer ducked back into the kitchen, dropped the tray on the counter, and covered her ears. If she had to listen to that screechy voice one more time, she was liable to commit an unpardonable act. The woman was constantly demanding more champagne and pestering Jennifer to "fix more of those cute little bacon-wrapped wieners, will yah, hon." Jennifer had never encountered someone so bereft of redeeming qualities from the top of her bleached-blonde hair to the spike of her teal heels.
She shuddered.
Dee Dee stuck her head in the doorway. "Sam told me to check on you. He said you'd reached a volcanic shade of red—which he insisted was not a particularly unusual color for you—and then you disappeared. Are you all right?"
Jennifer drew herself up. "I'm fine, but I'm finished serving this side of the room. If I have to go outside and come through the French doors to get to the other side, I will."
Dee Dee considered her friend. "The woman in teal."
"From the bow in her hair to the toe of her colored hose."
"I think you ought to reconsider," Dee Dee suggested. "Get to know her."
"Know her? I'd like for her to disappear. She's an escapee from some fairy tale, the evil Grizelda. She probably has tiny tots locked in her basement. Did you notice what a taste she has for pork, and you know what they say about the similarity to human flesh."
"Put all that aside, kiddo. She's a literary agent. Big-time stuff. She might do you some good. Her name's Penney Richmond. Ever heard of her?"
Jennifer froze. Her skin prickled to attention as all the blood drained from the upper part of her body and her knees gave way. She slid into one of the kitchen chairs.
"Did you say Penney Richmond?"
How dare she turn up in the flesh? How dare she have flesh? Penney Richmond was a voice on the phone, a signature on a letter, an intended murder victim, yes; but was she actually a living, breathing, human being? Maybe human was too strong a term.
"What's she doing here?" Jennifer managed to ask.
"So you've heard of her. She's Steve Moore's agent. She got him a deal you wouldn't believe—we're talking six figures easy—and that's just the advance."
"Non-fiction always brings more than fiction," Jennifer said automatically.
"Well, I'm glad to hear that. Maybe this project you're working on with Sam will pan out. It's good you're considering writing about a real-life crime."
And committing one? Would that require real blood?
"But Sam had better not let on who he is," Dee Dee went on. "If anyone finds out I let him do this… Are you sure you're all right?"
Some of the color was returning to Jennifer's cheeks. "Yes. I just need to sit for a minute. You go on back to your station, and I'll get some fresh ham biscuits out of the oven and bring them out."
Jennifer stared after her as Dee Dee disappeared back into the hallway. Penney Richmond was real. Real. How could that fact have escaped her before now? But she didn't have time to think about that. She had to return to the living room and start serving again. She had to listen to the conversation for Sam. And she had to see Penney Richmond.
She grabbed two oven mitts and pulled the oversized baking pan from the oven. The ham in the biscuits gave a sizzle as she plucked the appetizers from the pan and arranged them on a fresh salver.
She straightened her bow tie, brushed away the hairs that had escaped from her French twist, took three deep breaths, and threw back her shoulders. She could do this. She could walk into that room and pretend everything was just as it had been five minutes ago. Even if it wasn't.
She shouldered the tray and plunged into the melee.
The room was noisy and crowded, with a generous sprinkling of the beautiful people, mostly news anchors and a few other TV personalities.
A cackle broke above the din. Penney was somewhere on the left side of the room. Jennifer thought if she stayed to her right, she could effectively serve most of the guests without coming near the woman. She had to put all thoughts of Penney Richmond out of her head for now.
"This is the best damn food I've ever tasted," a rotund gentleman declared in a non-southern accent as he swept two ham biscuits into the palm of one hand.
Jennifer managed a smile. "Welcome to Macon. You must be one of Mr. Moore's New York colleagues."
"Actually, no." The man turned toward a circle of men directly behind her and bumped Jennifer's tray into the back of the man just in front of her.
"Ham biscuit?" she offered sweetly.
The beautiful face of John Allen turned to her. He was even more handsome close up than he had been with the sun creating a corona about his head on his wedding day.
"I hope you didn't get any of that grease on the back of my jacket!"
"I'm sorry, no, of course not. I never pack the trays to the edge for just that reason." She'd pack them any way he liked. She'd stack them up or down, dance around him with a biscuit in each hand, feed them to him personally. Those wonderful chiseled features—the guy had to have great genes. Jaimie could use a few of those genes.
"What's the calorie count?" he asked, a deep furrow forming between his generous eyebrows. "Are they worth it?" he asked seriously.
Jennifer blinked. She'd hoped for something more personal. "I don't know about the ham—I don't eat meat—but the biscuits are the best in Georgia, and the ham is almost fat free."
He offered a mocking half smile. "You one of those nature freaks?" he asked as he bit off a third of the biscuit and then grabbed up a second.
He was considerably more appealing when he didn't talk, but then she found men frequently were, especially those who had trouble understanding her aversion to animal flesh. They did, after all, seem to crave it.
"No," she smiled sweetly. "I just have other preferences."
"Yeah." He turned back to his companion. "You ought to try these biscuits, Lily." Lily, his wife and the first runner-up for Miss Georgia. She looked better from a distance.
Lily wrestled the second biscuit from his hand and dropped it back onto the tray. "I don't know how you can eat like that. The worst thing that could happen would be for you to pork up to three hundred pounds again. And be careful of the gristle. You could loosen one of your caps."
Okay, so maybe his genes weren't so great. On closer inspection that chiseled nose looked a tad too chiseled. But whatever his surgeon had to work with originally, he sure turned out one beautiful product.
"People are standing in line for your job. If you lose some hair, I can take care of it, but gain some weight… All someone needs is an excuse. Look at what happened to Kyle Browning."
"That's not why they let him go," John insisted. "People died, and Steve says since Kyle survived, he had to be held responsible. Kyle was just doing his job. And Steve says Kyle's job was to move on when the time was right."
Lily's eyes grew dangerously narrow. "I wasn't talking about his weight, you nitwit. I knew Kyle Browning as well as anyone in Macon so don't go telling me what Steve said. And I don't think Kyle was finished with national TV. He was lying low, biding his time, but he had a plan. You, on the other hand, can't seem to see past your next Twinkie. You'll never make it into the big leagues if you don't stop stuffing your mouth."
"Hell, Lily, I hate it when you start in on me like this."
"You hate it…"
Suddenly, as though in tandem, Lily's and John's eyes turned to Jennifer.
Her cloak of invisibility had suddenly dissolved. She put on her best I'm-dumb-as-a-post-and-didn't-follow-a-word-you-said look. "Another ham biscuit?" she offered.
Lily gave her a drop-dead look, threaded her arm through John's, and pulled him into the crowd.
So Sam was right. Kyle Browning wasn't despondent, at least not according to Lily Dawber, and there was a woman who could make any man despondent.
But she would have to consider Kyle's state of mind later. Right now sh
e had a ham biscuit to dispose of. She plucked it from the tray and wrapped it in a napkin. She'd put it in her pocket, but she still had grease stains where she'd once stashed a stuffed mushroom that had fallen on the floor.
She scanned the room. Typical party. Not a trash can to be seen. Sam would have one behind the bar.She swept in that direction, serving over half of the tray as she made her way across the room.
Sam was practically drooling over a gorgeous brunette as he handed the woman a glass of white wine. Jennifer came up behind him and let the biscuit thunk loudly into the metal can. She set the tray on the counter.
"Find out anything interesting?" Sam asked under his breath.
That Penney Richmond had corporeal form, but then Sam wouldn't be interested in that.
"Yeah, a little. It seems Lily Dawber had more than a passing acquaintance with Kyle Browning—and he wasn't depressed."
"Anything else?"
Jennifer shook her head. "I was doing great until they noticed I was alive. How about you?"
He wiped his hand on a towel and turned to her. "Bits and pieces. I just wish I knew what any of it meant. New York pretty much dissed the party, but most of Macon's media showed. The consensus seems to be that Moore is exploiting Browning's death to push his book—no big revelation. But I did hear something else that could turn out to be nothing or something big. See that woman over there?"
Even in that crowd, Penney Richmond stood out, and Sam was pointing straight at her. "Someone is threatening to kill her."