How to Host a Killer Party by Penny Warner Page B

side.
    Melvin. I knew that name.
    Uh-oh. The detective I was scheduled to meet at the station.
    Detective Melvin replaced his badge with a small notebook. “Who found the body?” he said, glancing back and forth between Duncan and me.
    “Uh . . . I guess I found her . . . but I thought it was some kind of fish or something. . . .” Duncan shot a look at me and jerked his thumb in my direction. “Presley thought it was a dolphin. Then she recognized the body.”
    “Presley?” The detective frowned. His black eyebrows accentuated his pale blue eyes. This guy was way too good-looking to be a cop. He should have been a male model. He probably knew it.
    “Presley Parker?”
    Pulling myself from the eye candy, I nodded.
    He cocked his jaw and stared at me as if he’d just identified the Zodiac Killer. Flipping a page in his notebook, he scanned it, then looked up at me again with those nearly transparent blue eyes. “We have an appointment this morning. Regarding the death of Andrea Sax.” He pronounced it An-DRA-ya, instead of AN-dree-ya.
    I pulled out my cell and glanced at the time. “Yeah. Guess we’re both going to be a little late.”
    Not even cracking a grin, he said, “What are you doing out here?”
    “I thought I’d get in a little exercise before our meeting, so I skated around the path, and then I saw Duncan—”
    Before I could ramble on like my mother, another police car pulled up, and two crime scene techs jumped out. I could tell because they wore dark blue jumpsuits with the letters SFCSI stitched on the fronts and backs, and carried metal suitcases like on TV.
    “Officer Price will take your statement,” Detective Melvin said, indicating his partner before stepping over to greet the new arrivals. I nodded, unable to escape the nagging notion that I might be in real trouble now that I was connected—albeit randomly—to two dead bodies in less than two days.
    Detective Melvin nodded to his partner, and the younger officer took my statement. As soon as we were finished, she reported back to the detective. He nodded a couple of times, whispered something to her I couldn’t make out, then turned to me.
    “My office, one hour,” he called out. Then he climbed into his car and drove off, Officer Price riding shotgun. My legs wobbly, I managed to skate back to my condo, my brain racing faster than my rubbery legs. I couldn’t get that image of a floating Ikea out of my head. Nor the idea that I was connected to both victims.
    I showered robotically, grabbed the cleanest clothes I had—black jeans and an “Irritable Bowel Syndrome—The DaVinci Colon” T-shirt I had made up for a murder mystery party/fund-raiser. I slipped on a pair of fuzzy black socks and my favorite black Mary Janes, and topped my outfit with a black leather jacket. Grabbing my knockoff purse, I was headed for the door before I remembered to feed my three cats, Cairo, Fatman, and Thursby.
    Ingrates. They didn’t even bother to look up from their various spots on my garage sale furnishings as I filled the bowls with dry cat food. No doubt they were holding out for seagull tapas and rodent al dente. All three had been strays I’d found on the island when I moved in. Fatman was fat and white, Cairo was an orange scaredy-cat, and Thursby was my black killer attack cat that mostly attacked my feet. At the moment he was asleep in my half-closed underwear drawer, his nose tucked into a Victoria’s Secret bra cup.
    I knew if I didn’t watch out, I’d turn into one of those cat ladies who falls and can’t get up, undiscovered for days, ears chewed off by hungry felines—
    The theme song from The Twilight Zone rang out from my cell phone, ending my death-by-cats vision. I checked the number. Blocked.
    “Hello?” I said, multitasking as I glanced at the kitschy cat clock with the big rolling eyes and wagging tail on the wall. Time to go. Didn’t want to be late for my interrogation. I wondered whether I should pack a bag or