Killer Cocktail Read Free

couple of vaguely unsatisfying phone calls. Clearly, I’d made him uncomfortable. How uncomfortable was the question.
    But perhaps it was a question best pondered somewhere out of town in the company of my two best friends. I tried to remember the balance on my credit card. “It’s the first week of May. When does the season start?”
    “Doesn’t matter. We’re going to my aunt’s house.”
    Cassady and I exchanged a look, confirming that we were troubled by the same thought. “Aunt Cynthia?” I asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Aunt Cynthia of the ever-fluctuating last will and testament?” Cassady asked.
    “The same.”
    “The Aunt Cynthia who got drunk at your grandfather’s funeral and stood on the dining room table and sang ‘We’ll Meet Again,’” I continued, just to make sure that we were all, in fact, talking about a woman we had heard Tricia vow she would never speak to again unless under court order.
    “That’s her.”
    Cassady and I wavered, uncertain of the etiquette involved in saying the next thing. I took the plunge. “But you hate her.”

    “Yes, but she has a great house,” Tricia insisted, a little too brightly.
    “Oh, I get it. She’s going away and you’ve bribed the housekeeper to slip you the keys for the weekend,” Cassady said.
    “No. She’s going to be there. The whole family’s going to be there.” Tricia’s smile stretched to the point where I feared it might permanently torque her small face like a bad facelift. “And if you guys don’t come with me, I could very well wind up being the one singing on the dining room table.”
    Cassady shrugged. “Well, I can’t miss that. Count me in.”
    “What’s going on?” I asked.
    “That’s Molly’s way of saying that she’d love to come, too,” Cassady teased.
    “Well, of course I’d love to, but I don’t get it. If Aunt Cynthia’s doing the whole black sheep thing, why’s the entire family trooping down there and why don’t you just plead heavy workload and not go?”
    Tricia’s smile faltered. “It’s David’s engagement party.”
    The Vincents are a fascinating family. New England bluebloods, super-Republican, the closest thing to aristocracy I’ve ever met. Tricia jokes that her ancestors came over on the advance ship before the Mayflower, to make sure the Colonies were suitable and that everything had been set up properly; planning and controlling are in her blood. Her parents live in Connecticut, but they also keep an apartment in the city because they’re constantly coming in for some function or another. They’ve always been lovely to Cassady and me. Tricia’s crazy about them, but they also make her crazy. Her favorite brother, David, is a case in point. She adores him, would walk out on the president to take a call from him, but David acts first and thinks second and usually calls Tricia to clean up third.

    “They got engaged?” Cassady asked.
    Tricia’s smile disappeared altogether. “Her parents are throwing some huge party in L.A., but Mother and Dad decided to up the ante and throw them a proper engagement party here first. Mother doesn’t think those show people on the Left Coast respect social ritual. But Mother and Dad’s little project turned into a whole weekend that turned into too many people for the house in Connecticut. Obviously, someone didn’t put the scotch away soon enough and got on the phone with Aunt Cynthia, and you guys have to come because I don’t know how I’ll get through it otherwise.” The fingernail of her right index finger dug into the cuticle of her right thumb, Tricia’s classic sign of distress.
    “Of course we’ll be there,” I assured her, taking her hand in mine to stop the digging.
    Then, because it is Cassady’s gift, she said the thing we were all thinking. “He’s really going to marry that bitch?”
    For just a moment, I thought that glow beneath Tricia’s Dresden doll exterior was going to reveal itself to be molten lava and we were going