The Party

By-KERRIAN MURRAY

My phone buzzed. I rolled over to look at the text my cousin Maya had just sent.

Can you send photo you took of all the girls in costume last night? xoxo

My head was throbbing. Hanging out with Maya was fun, but she was eight years younger than me and she and her friends loved to do shots. I needed to stick with beer only if I didn’t want the hangover.

That’s what I'd do next time.

I opened my photos app to find the picture Maya had requested. It was a group shot I had no memory of taking. It wasn’t everyone who’d been at the party - just the girls who’d dressed up, all five of them smiling cheesily. The starlet, the busybody, the social climber, the professor, and the old lady - everyone dressed to impress. The most incredible costume, by far, was worn by a girl named Lee who was a stranger to this group, the new girlfriend of Maya’s friend Patrick. She was a gorgeous girl in her twenties, but she’d come wearing make-up on her face that aged her fifty years.

The photo of the girls wasn’t great - there was a weird glare off of Maya’s microwave or something - but I sent it, and then began to scroll through the other recent photos. I had no memory of any of them.

It was a problem. I mean, I didn’t have a problem problem, and everyone had gotten a little sloppy last night. But Maya’s boyfriend Matthew had to get me an Uber - I was too drunk to drive home - and that was embarrassing.

There were photos of Maya and Matthew being adorable; a few selfies of me with others, which were mortifying, since my make-up had smeared without me knowing; and one photo of a dead body.

I deleted that one - it was blurry - and rolled over to go back to sleep.

*****

The idea of a murder mystery party had sounded corny to me at first, but Maya was great at selling the idea of a good time.

“It’ll be hilarious,” she promised me over drinks a few weeks ago. “I’ve got dibs on being Josephine La Rosa, the movie star, though, so you can’t take that one.”

I’d never been to a murder mystery party before, but Maya had explained the concept. Everyone was given a dramatic role to play, an entirely new identity for the evening. One of us would serve as the moderator, handing out index cards telling people different things they needed to say and do throughout the evening. There would be one card given to a character instructing them to pretend they’d been killed. The remainder of the evening would involve all the players trying to sort through the clues and solve the murder.

I didn’t want to participate. “I’m not really into role play,” I told Maya. She wiggled her eyebrows at me, making me laugh. “You know what I mean - dressing up, acting.”

“You have to do it,” she insisted. I got a vision of Maya as a high school student. She was skilled in the art of peer pressure.

Of course, we didn’t go to high school at the same time. When I was in high school, getting bullied by the popular girls and trying to keep my head down, Maya was in grade school. My other cousin - Maya’s older brother Stephen - was a year ahead of me in school. We were friends back then, but I didn’t see him much these days. He was married, with two kids who were the kind of adorable that made me ache. I didn’t like thinking about Stephen and his perfect family.

“I’ll come,” I promised Maya. “But I’m not dressing up.”

*****

Before the party, I’d made a rule for myself - no beer, only liquor. I had a tendency to pound beers but was better at slowly sipping a mixed drink.

A party like this was literally my worst nightmare. Every other girl was confident, impressive in their role. Maya was an effervescent Hollywood starlet. Her three closest girlfriends - Molly, Miranda, and Tess - had clearly gotten ready altogether, and their costumes were spectacular. They were a close-knit group, and it made me miss my closest girlfriends, who I didn’t see as much these days.

It was when Lee entered that I started to feel overwhelmed. There was a flurry of activity when she walked in with Patrick, the girls oohing and aahing at her costume and make-up, Maya’s buddy Aaron grabbing her cane and poking her with it flirtatiously.

“So nice to meet you all,” Lee had croaked in a faux old lady voice. Why were some girls so beautiful that they could twist their faces gruesomely and still grab the attention of every guy in the room?

Even Matthew stared at her, his mouth agape, when she entered. I elbowed him, which seemed to snap him out of it.

“She’s hot, but you have a girlfriend who’s my cousin,” I’d whispered to him.

Matthew had shaken his head, grinning back at me. We got along well. From our converations, I knew that he had also been an ugly duckling in high school. Maya had shown me his old yearbook, laughing affectionately at his bowtie and buck teeth. With a bit of dental work and a six figure job, he was now a catch and had the confidence that went with it.

That stung a little. Ugly ducklings can either grow into swans, or into sloppy ducks like me.

*****

The next time my phone buzzed, I was still in bed, even though it was nearly noon. It was Maya again. She always sprang right out of bed after a night of drinking. That was the difference between twenty-seven and thirty-five.

She was sobbing.

“Lee is dead,” she said, her voice quiet and trembling.

I laughed. Lee had been a fantastic murder victim the night before. Really, what was she not good at? Matthew had handed her the index card - he’d fixed his staring problem by then, just smiled briefly at her - and she’d disappeared into Maya’s bathroom to splay herself out on the tile floor. When we discovered her, she was covered in red, having stolen a bottle of ketchup from the refrigerator for added effect.

“No, no, Amy.”

I paused.

“Really dead,” Maya said. “Patrick just called from the hospital. She’s dead.”

*****

An hour later, the eight of us - all the murder mystery party attendees, except for Lee - were at the police station.

Maya was a wreck. I was trying not to throw up. I’d taken a shot of tequila before I left for the police station. Madness, maybe, but it was all I’d had in the house - my little effort at moderating, since tequila hurt my stomach. The other girls were crying. Aaron and Matthew were stone-faced.

We saw Patrick, down the hallway with an officer, too far away to see his face.

We weren’t supposed to speak to each other, and we were quickly separated. Maya looked at me longingly as a female police officer escorted her to a private room.

“Ma’am?”

I looked up.

“Can you come with me?”

The room looked just like the ones I’d seen on TV - a large window, a rectangular table, two empty wooden chairs. I stared at the officer. “Is this an investigation?”

He was older - maybe my father’s age, with graying hair and rosy cheeks. He nodded. “Precautionary, I’m sure,” he said. “I’m Officer Myers.”

“How did she die?” I asked.

Officer Myers narrowed his eyes at me. “No one told you?”

I shook my head. “Patrick didn’t tell Maya.”

“Ms. Latour, have you been drinking?”

I could feel my face turn red. “It’s been - it was a late night, and then the news -”

He was frowning at me, sternly - the way Dad used to. “Can you tell me anything about the end of the evening - the goodbyes?”

“Don’t you want to know about the murder?”

Officer Myers stared at me, and I flushed again. “Ms. Latour, no one has said anything about a murder, and you just told me you don’t know how Ms. Imogene Monroe -”

“Who?”

I regretted my question instantly. This officer didn’t like to be interrupted.

“Imogene Monroe is the woman who died right after attending a party you also attended, Ms. Latour.”

My mouth felt dry. “I didn’t know - she said her name was Lee. I never met her before last night.” Officer Myers continued to stare at me.

Everything was all wrong.

When I’m nervous, I drink. If I can’t drink, I babble incessantly.

“Did she - was it a car accident? She had a bit to drink, but not as much as Patrick.” I closed my eyes, picturing them at the door of Maya’s house. Patrick was slumped and sloppy, not that I’m one to talk, but Lee had seemed just fine. She had smiled at me and thanked me. Why had she thanked me? “I gave her a bottle of water, for the road,” I added, remembering.

It was the wrong thing to say. Officer Myers tried to keep his expression neutral, but his mustache twitched and I could hear his foot start to tap beneath the table.

“Ms. Latour,” he said quietly. “Do you have anyone you can call?”

*****

There wasn’t anyone to call. My mother had left me and Dad when I was a kid. A year ago, I could have called Dad, but he’d just been moved into an assisted living facility a few months ago after receiving his diagnosis. Early onset Alzheimer’s, just like my grandfather. Dad was in his fifties when we found out. Now, he was sixty-three, and he didn’t know who I was half the time when I went to visit. I didn’t visit him much, honestly. It was too hard to see him the way he was.

The only person I wanted to talk to was Maya, but Officer Myers explained that she was being questioned down the hall and us communicating wasn’t an option.

There was a phone in the room with us. There was only one person I could think of to call, and I really didn’t want to call him. I took my cell phone from my pocket.

“I can’t let you look through your phone,” Officer Myers said sternly.

“I just need to look up a number,” I said. “My cousin Stephen.” He watched me carefully. When I unlocked the phone, it was the photo of Maya, Lee, and the other three girls that popped up first. I quickly clicked away from it and found Stephen’s number, then dialed it on the station phone.

“Amy? Are you okay?”

My eyes filled wih tears. My last interaction with Stephen had been awful. Yelling. Accusations. I wasn’t a good daughter. His father was taking care of Dad the way I should be doing. I don’t know what I expected today, but his voice was concerned and caring.

“I don’t know. I need a lawyer. I think I’m in trouble.”

“You are. Don’t react - I’m sure you’re not alone.”

My eyes shifted to Officer Myers.

“Maya already called me. I don’t think they’ve figured that out yet, so keep cool, okay?” Stephen was a surgeon, and as he spoke I could picture him in the OR - giving instructions confidently, in his element, knowing what to say and do in ways I never did.

It wasn’t always like this. In high school, Stephen was a jock who partied and I was bookish and intelligent. I had a nearly photographic memory, a straight A average, and multiple college scholarship offers. I didn’t even drink until college. Then after college, when Dad started looking right through me when we talked, I started having a beer with dinner every night to take the edge off. One a day led to two, then six, and then a decade passed and Stephen was a hot shot and I was barely able to remember what happened at a freaking murder mystery party that I wouldn’t have attended if I was a normal thirty-five-year-old with a steady job and a family and a moderate amount of self-esteem.

“Amy? Amy!”

“I’m here,” I said quickly. “Can you find the number for the attorney?”

“Good girl. Listen, it’s the waters.”

Was he speaking in code? “Stephen?”

“The waters you gave out as Lee and the others were leaving,” Stephen said. “She had a peanut allergy, and there were traces of peanut in the bottle she drank out of. She didn’t open it until she stopped driving. Patrick woke up in the passenger seat and she was going into anaphylactic shock. No epipen in her purse, either, and Patrick swore that she always had one on her.”

My head was spinning. “So now -”

“My wife’s dad is an attorney - he’s retired, but he’ll have someone down there in twenty minutes, Ames.” He hadn’t called me that in such a long time. “Ames? They don’t have any motive, okay? They’ll release you. Just hang tight.”

I nodded.

“Ames?”

“Yeah - yes. Stephen, you didn’t ask me -”

“I don’t need to ask you anything. You didn’t do this. Stay cool and we’ll be right there.”

*****

The only person who’d ever accused me of having a drinking problem was Stephen, and I denied it. I was a crappy daughter and a lousy cousin and friend, and I liked to party, but I wasn’t an alcoholic. Yeah, I drank when I was sad, and yeah, sometimes things got messy, but I was functional. I had a job, and I paid my bills, and I’d never gotten a DUI or passed out in a ditch or anything like that.

Yet as I sat there, waiting for my cousin to save me from the mess I’d created, I couldn’t deny that drinking had contributed to my predicament. I’d been a hungover mess all day, and not thinking straight.

I used to be the girl with the level head, the girl who could think through any problem, the girl who did logic puzzles for fun. I’d been solving the Hidden Pictures puzzles from Highlights magazine ever since I was four years old -

It hit me suddenly. My head had been throbbing all day, but I forced myself to concentrate.

There was something I’d seen. Or was it something someone had said? Or both?

There was a knock at the door. An officer entered - the one I’d seen with Maya earlier - with a woman I’d never seen before.

“Ms. Latour, come with me.”

I rose, but I didn’t leave the room. Officer Myers had stepped in my path. “What the -”

“Amber Griffin, Ms. Latour’s attorney. You don’t have the evidence to hold her, sir.”

They started to bicker, the officers and my attorney, and I bent forward, tucking my head between my legs and placing my hands over my ears to muffle the noise.

*****

It was Miranda who murdered Lee - or rather, the professor who fake murdered the old lady, which we found out toward the end of our murder mystery party evening. Everyone dissolved in laughter when it was revealed, mostly because Miranda is such a sweetheart.

Matthew was the one who solved it. He wasn’t drinking at all, which I think helped. He’d had one mixed drink while he, Maya, and I were prepping for the party, but nothing after the other guests had all arrived.

“It’s because she was cruel to me in high school,” I remembered Miranda saying, giggling, almost apologizing to Lee for the affront. “Lee’s character. That was in our back stories. She used to bully me every day, so when I saw her as a grown-up, I snapped.”

By this point in the night, I was incredibly drunk, but those words stood out to me. To Matthew, too, I could tell. We knew what it was like to be bullied. The stories Matthew had told me over the past three years - the ways he’d been tormented.

It was enough to push anyone over the edge.

*****

There was something that was eluding me. A memory. A visual.

If I can figure this out, I thought, I’ll never drink again.

It wasn’t just about my freedom, which I could tell was in jeopardy. Of course, I was terrified. I hadn’t done anything to hurt anyone, and I wanted desperately to go home.

More than that, though, I wanted to conquer my memory, my brain. I wanted my mind to be my own again. How many times had I lost my thoughts, my memories, been unable to retrieve something from the corners of my mind?

When everything clicked into place, I lifted my head and looked at Officer Myers and my attorney, who stopped arguing and looked back.

“Did you have something to share, Ms. Latour?” Amber said quietly.

It was the reflection I’d seen in the photo I sent Maya that morning - a distraction from the five girls in the photograph. The combination of microwave and oven and a trick of the light, I supposed, because what I remembered right then was what I’d seen that morning but not registered as important in my half-drunk, half-hungover state.

A vision of Matthew, an open water bottle in one hand, his other fist closed tightly around something.

It wasn’t proof. I had no idea if they’d even believe me. I was still in a lot of trouble.

Yet I felt satisfied, the way anyone would feel when they find something - their keys, a fact, a memory - that they’d thought was lost forever.

“There’s a photo on my phone,” I said quietly. “Passcode 5560, my dad’s birthday. You need to see it.”