Page 40 of Safari Murder Party
“What are you—”
He swung them into the map’s case.
Glass shattered, sparkling. Waylon reached his hand through the frame’s new gaping hole and withdrew the canvas. Fletcher’s eyes lingered on the scattered glass, the binoculars-size hole. Someone should clean up the mess. Waylon, in a utopian civilization. Her, in reality.
“Here.” He plunked the map down in front of her. Smoke curled off the end of his cigar. It burned all the way to Fletcher’s lungs.
Red laced his knuckles, grooves etched by the jagged case. Two blood splotches dripped near the volcano’s peak. Another by the western shoreline. Three across the jungle. Fletcher’s head spun with every new stain.
“You’re—oh my god. Why would you do that?”
His unrelenting gaze bored into her. “You can’t play it safe anymore, Spence. Safe’ll get you killed. You’ve got to take what you want.”
Waylon could give her all the fortune cookie wisdom he wanted. He was stillbleedingon the map.
She scrolled up the canvas as fast as she could. Mostly to give herself something to do while he grabbed one of the monogrammed handkerchiefs—silk, dark green—and wrapped it around his knuckles, tying it with his teeth. No sooner than she’d stuffed the map into her backpack were they out the door. Her mental list wouldn’t check itself off.
Whatever fear-fueled momentum propelled her through the day had long since worn off. They’d need food, something beyond the binoculars to defend themselves with, and camping gear. (Fletcher seriously debated whether or not they’d have room to pack their fabulously soft sheets.)
But the manor was a minefield. Navigating it without setting off one of her colleagues required expert precision.
One hallway blurred into the next.Jet-Settereditions touting Mediterranean escapes and South American adventures breadcrumbed toward the main entertaining areas. At an intersection, Fletcher took a right turn, bypassing the prep kitchen’s swinging doors.
Waylon stopped stubbornly in the middle of the hall. “Kitchen’s this way.”
Fletcher kept walking. “I know.”
“I can hear your stomach growling from here.”
“Quit listening.”
A series of formidable steps shuffled down the hall behind her until Waylon spun her around by the shoulder. With a nudge, he pushedher back toward the kitchen. “Did I hallucinate when you saidNext step, food?”
“Exactly. Food.” Fletcher ground her heels in until they stopped their death march. “Notkitchen. The kitchen is inevitably occupied.”
Waylon’s overtalkative eyebrows rose in question.
With a gulping inhale, Fletcher spelled it out for him: “Opal doesn’t go anywhere without a secret joint. I saw her pull one out of her makeup bag after last quarter’s sales strategy meeting. She’s definitely in the kitchen. Munchies. Sheila’s with her because Sheila will take free drugs from anyone. Plus, when Sheila finished suntanning this afternoon, she found Raul floating like Gatsby in the pool—”
“Raul’s dead?”
“Raul’s dead. Shot. Floating in the pool. Keep up. So, Opal would have offered her a hit to stop her from freaking out. Even though Sheila drives Opal crazy, Sales will stick together. They’re pack people. Stronger with numbers. But Opal’s ambitious, and with Theo gone, she’ll use Sheila. Rick, too. They’ll stock up and head out to find Rick by morning.”
“What are you?” Waylon asked. “The salesperson whisperer?”
“I’m good at my job.”
For the sake of her own satisfaction, Fletcher led Waylon closer to the kitchen doors, following the sound of crashing silverware, slamming cabinets, and an unmistakable nasally voice.
“So, I was telling Eric that Penelope said that Wendy toldherthat Jeremy’s parties aren’t any fun unless you do cocaine, and there I was, cocaine-less.”
Through the open sliver, Fletcher spied Sheila’s mile-high curls where she sat cross-legged on the counter. She stopped talking only long enough to plop a leftover slice of sushi in her mouth. Fletcher could practically taste the day-old tuna from where she was standing.
Next to her, Opal swung a chef’s knife through a mango, thebladechunking into a wooden cutting board. The sound startled Fletcher backward. “How do you even get yourself into these situations?”
Sheila shrugged. “I just tell people I’m a Cartwright. Works like a charm. Nobody cares what I do when I’ve got Uncle Dyer’s money. Like, this one time in college, I told him I needed money because tuition increased, but I cashed the check, skipped finals, and went to Saint Bart’s.” Fletcher peeked back at Waylon, whose mouth twitched in irritation but not surprise. Apparently a little low-stakes familial fraud was par for the course. “One night, we drank so much rum—”
“Remind me to never ask you a question ever again. Hurry and finish packing so we can go find Rick.”
