Free A Catered Birthday Party by Isis Crawford Page A

adventure?”
    “I must be getting old too. Getting in at three and getting up at five to shovel a path to the store just doesn’t excite me as much as it used to.”
    “You mean I’m not worth it?”
    Bernie gave him The Look.
    “How about if I helped shovel?”
    “That might be feasible,” Bernie conceded. “Not that you will.”
    Brandon wiggled his eyebrows up and down. Bernie couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing.
    Brandon plunked his elbows on the bar. “See, Libby,” he said. “I’m just an irresistible force of nature.”
    “You’re something,” Bernie told him. “That’s for sure.”
    Libby smiled, but her heart wasn’t in it. Marvin could at least call.
    “Don’t you worry,” Brandon said, reading her mind. “He’ll be here soon. Go on and have a sip of the stout. It’s the sovereign cure for what ails you.”
    “I thought that was chocolate.”
    Brandon pushed the bottle closer to her.
    This time Libby took a sip.
    “Not bad,” she said grudgingly.
    “Not bad?” Brandon yelped.
    “Okay,” Libby conceded. “It’s good. But it still doesn’t taste like chocolate.”
    “How can you say that?” Brandon protested.
    Before Libby could answer, Bernie held up her hand. “Enough,” she said. “It’s time to do what we came here for—talk to Kevin O’Malley.”
    Brandon shrugged. “You can try, but as I told you on the phone, he likes to drink alone.”
    Bernie fluttered her eyelashes. “I’m hoping to change his mind.”
    “I don’t think that’s going to work, babe,” Brandon said. “Not that you don’t have…um…great lashes, but Kevin used to run a strip club and has become immune to feminine wiles. Unlike me.”
    “Hmm,” Bernie replied. “Strip club to a fancy food store. That’s an interesting leap. I wonder how he did it.”
    Brandon shrugged. “I heard that his dad died and left him some money and he did this because it was as far away from a strip club as he could possibly get. But I don’t know for sure. He isn’t a real chatty kind of guy. He likes to be left alone and have his three shots of Black Label. So that’s what I do. I don’t think you’re going to have much luck getting him to talk about the Colbert household.”
    Bernie shrugged. “I know it’s a long shot, but I figure anything that we learn is better than nothing. Right now we don’t have much.”
    “We don’t have anything,” Libby interjected.
    Bernie cracked open a peanut. “Except for what Annabel said.”
    “To which no one is paying any attention,” Libby observed.
    “And they may be right,” Bernie said. “Who knows? She might have staged this whole thing herself. According to Dad, that’s the latest theory going around—no doubt suggested by her husband.”
    “He suggested what?” Libby practically yelped.
    Bernie took a sip of her Brooklyn Brown. “Didn’t I tell you? The new scenario is that Annabel poisoned herself out of spite, so Richard would then get arrested for her murder.”
    “I gotta say, that would be quite a grudge she was carrying,” Brandon said. “Talk about not being clear on the concept.”
    Libby turned to her sister. “You don’t actually believe that, do you?”
    “Obviously not,” Bernie told her.
    “Me neither,” Libby said. “But it’s a very…”
    “Seductive explanation,” Bernie supplied.
    Libby nodded. “Exactly.”
    Brandon refilled the plastic bowl in front of Libby and Bernie with shelled peanuts. The peanuts were R.J.’s trademark. Usually the floor was littered with the shells, which crunched when people stepped on them, but tonight the only piles were around Bernie’s and Libby’s feet. Not only did the peanuts add a little local color, but they were cheap, and they absorbed the alcohol so people could drink more.
    “I thought you guys weren’t going to take this on?” he said. “How come you changed your minds?”
    Bernie lifted up her hands and brought them down. “What can I say? Our consciences