“Don’t go anywhere.” He turned to the growing crowd. “Don’t anybody go anywhere,” he said to them. He picked up the phone on the wall and called the police.
They arrived quickly. Charlie Chan moved everybody but Ebony and me back out front. He poked his head back into the kitchen after the last of the partygoers had left and asked if we’d be okay.
“I don’t know if okay is the right word,” I said.
“The police are going to want to talk to both of you.”
“I’ll wait here until they arrive.”
He nodded, as if that was an appropriate answer, and left.
Ebony hadn’t said anything since dropping the knife. I turned her away from the view of Blitz’s body and guided her to the opposite side of the kitchen island. We stopped in front of the large Sub-Zero freezer. I opened the door and a whoosh of frigid air enveloped us. I propped the door open with an empty ice bucket from a shelf on the wall. The cool air would do wonders for Ebony by the time the police came back to us. I hoped.
The third swinging of the doors brought uniformed officers and emergency technicians. The lead officer, an athletic blond woman with girl-next-door features, dressed in a black pantsuit over a white shirt, snapped photos of Blitz’s body from every angle. She spoke to the techs. Charlie Chan came in and said something in her ear and then pointed to us. The officer shook Charlie Chan’s hand, nodded to the technicians, and approached us.
She introduced herself as Detective Nichols and asked for our names, which she jotted down in a small notebook. “Which one of you ladies found the body?” she asked.
Though it had been pretty clear that Ebony saw the body before me, I spoke first. “I came back to see if Ebony needed help with the goose. When I came into the kitchen, Blitz was on the floor in a pool of blood.”
“Where were you, Ms. Welles?” she asked Ebony.
“Goose,” Ebony said.
“Excuse me?”
“She was tending to the goose,” I translated. “Detective, Ebony is clearly shaken up by what happened here. Can we sit down somewhere?” She looked around for chairs. “Out front, maybe?” I added. My hope was that once Ebony was away from the body and the crime scene, she’d snap out of it.
“Sure,” Nichols said.
We followed her, walking past the kitchen island a second time. I diverted my eyes to the wall of silver pots and pans to the left of the swinging doors and pretended nothing was amiss, like a person walking a tightrope might avoid looking at the ground. If my shrink was right and I had a tendency to avoid reality, now was the perfect time to use that skill as a crutch.
The ballroom was empty, save for the decorations and discarded plates and glasses. Charlie Chan stood along the back wall with his arms folded over his chest. When he saw us, he relaxed his arms. The detective waved him forward and then turned to me.
“I’d like to talk to Ms. Welles alone,” she said. “Why don’t you talk to Mr. Hoshiyama?”
“Who’s Mr. Hoshiyama?” I asked.
“He’s me,” Charlie Chan answered.
“Who are you?” I asked.
He looked at me as if I were nuts. I looked at Ebony.
“You go with the Asian. I’ll take the American,” she said.
I followed Charlie Chan out a fire exit along the side wall of the banquet hall. He turned to me. “Takenouchi Hoshiyama,” he said. “Call me Tak.” He held out his hand.
I shook it. “Margo Tamblyn,” I said back. “Call me Margo.” His handshake was gentle and comforting. I held on for too long, and then dropped it as if I were shaking off water from freshly washed hands. After a few awkward seconds of me wishing I knew the appropriate thing to say at a time like this, I defaulted to what I knew, and I complimented his costume.
“You make a good Charlie Chan.”
“You did a good job with the rest of the costume. With all of them. When Blitz hired you to make forty costumes in a day, I had my doubts.”
“Blitz told you he hired me to make the costumes?” I asked.
“I was at your shop,” he said.
I thought back to the day Blitz had been at the store. “He was alone,” I said.
“After happy hour.”
It wasn’t until then that I remembered the man who had come in when Blitz and Grady were talking and had walked off in a different direction. “That was you?” I scanned him from top to toes and back again. “I didn’t recognize you.”
“Isn’t that the point of a costume?”
Under different circumstances, I could have spent the next half hour extolling the virtues of costumes as shield, confidence booster, identity badge, and creative outlet, but now hardly seemed the time. Besides, I was too worried about Ebony to have a superficial conversation with one of Blitz’s friends. And considering Charlie Chan—Tak—was one of Blitz’s friends, he was taking the murder much differently than the other party guests. Involuntarily, I stepped backward to put distance between us.
“Why are you here?” I asked.