Murder on K Street - Margaret Truman [79]
Emma looked over to where the groper with a fixation on the server’s posterior was overtly drunk. He wasn’t the only one, and Emma whispered to the bartender, “Go easy with him and some of the others. I don’t need a drunk rolling out of here and wrapping his car around somebody.”
She checked her watch. The party was booked from seven until nine. It was eight thirty. Time for a break, she told herself and headed for the kitchen to hide out for ten minutes. The room had two doorways, one leading into the living room, another on the opposite wall that opened onto a short hallway. She sat on a stool near the latter, allowed her flat shoes to dangle from her toes, and reached down to massage her feet. A conversation from the hallway captured her attention. She immediately recognized Jonell Marbury’s deep baritone voice.
“You’re acting like a fool, Marla,” he said.
“Don’t call me a fool,” she said. “If you think I’m going to stand around while you cozy up to Camelia Watson, you’ve got another guess coming.”
“I wasn’t cozying up to her, as you put it. It’s her going-away party, Marla. I’m just being nice, that’s all.”
Marla lowered her voice, but it was still audible to Emma. “You aren’t kidding anyone, Jonell, especially me. You’ve had the hots for her for a long time. I’m not blind.”
“Marla, I—”
“You’d better make up your mind, Jonell. You’re not a Mormon. You get one wife, one woman. I’m going home.”
“No, don’t do that, Marla. A bunch of us are going to a bar after we leave here.”
“Wrong, Jonell. Maybe you are going to a bar, you and Ms. Watson. I’m out of here.”
Emma heard the click of Marla’s heels on the hall floor. Jonell called out, “Marla, wait.” Then there was silence from the other side of the door.
Emma exhaled a stream of air and shook her head. Romance. Men and women. Jealousy. Never easy, she thought as she slipped her feet back into her shoes and left the kitchen to help wrap things up.
“Great food, as usual,” Rick Marshalk said as he and his date were leaving. “No surprise. You’re the best, Emma.”
Others passed along compliments, too, as the crowd thinned and the noise level lowered. Soon she was alone with her staff, and they attacked the cleanup.
“Thanks, everybody,” she said as they gathered on the sidewalk after loading things into the extended minivan Emma used in her business. “Great job. And thanks for filling in at the last minute. Call my office in the morning if you’d like more work with me. You were all terrific.”
As she drove to her office and kitchen across town, where she would park the van overnight and empty it in the morning, she thought about Neil Simmons’s arrival; she hadn’t seen him for the rest of the evening. She reasoned that it wasn’t easy attending a social event on the heels of your mother’s murder, and that he probably had made what was a mandatory appearance as Marshalk’s president, skipping out at the first opportunity.
After parking the van, she got in her car and drove home to where Rotondi waited.
“How’d it go?” he asked after she’d changed into pajamas and a robe.
“It went fine. Big drinking crowd. Speaking of that, I need a drink. You?”
“No, thanks. Just some water.” They went to the kitchen, where she poured herself a brandy. He drew cold water from the refrigerator’s water dispenser and used it to wash down two painkillers.
“Leg’s bothering you tonight?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He tried to avoid taking the pain medication he always carried with him, but there were times when it was necessary.
“How was your day?” she asked when they were settled again in the den.
“Okay. I had lunch with Mac Smith. He says hello.”
“What was the occasion?”
“No occasion. I enjoy spending time with him. He’s savvy and straightforward. Refreshing. Were that fellow Jonell and his fiancée there tonight?”
“They sure were. I ended up overhearing