Poisoned Prose (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

her chair and started to hum.
    “Please, Mariah,” said the man sitting next to her. He wore a tight T-shirt that accentuated his enormous biceps and sculpted chest. “Don’t start singing ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ again.”
    “But Violetta was the girl with the kaleidoscope eyes,” Mariah protested dreamily.
    Olivia silently agreed. Violetta had an otherworldly quality about her, and her blue gaze had been filled with starlight.
    “She was an entertainer. A fine one I’ll grant you, but she wasn’t a saint or an angel or a goddess,” the man argued good-naturedly. “Now get that drink down your throat before it melts.”
    Mariah took a gulp of her piña colada.
    “A goddess?” Amabel scoffed, rubbing the salt off the rim of her margarita glass with her pinkie. “That’s how the media will portray her. She was always a media darling.”
    The conversation turned from Violetta to newspaper reviews, and by the time the storytellers had started in on a second round of drinks and a platter of calamari, Olivia discovered that the man seated beside Mariah was a personal trainer named Ian. Ian lived in South Carolina and claimed to be Violetta’s biggest fan.
    “I’ve followed her all over the country,” he admitted outright. “She’s the reason I got into this crazy life in the first place. I see hot women all the time in my line of work, but none of them could hold a candle to her.”
    Millay appeared. After serving the storytellers their third round of drinks, she took a seat. “I’m officially on break,” she announced and gave them a conspiratorial wink. “And no worries about the tab. It’s taken care of. This is your night to be treated like kings and queens.”
    “That’ll be a first,” Amabel groused, but her cohorts clapped and hooted, and Olivia was pleased to see that Millay’s heavy-handed pouring was having the desired effect. The group was becoming less inhibited. Greg openly leered at Millay’s cleavage, Mariah pulled out the chopsticks holding her hair in place, freeing a mass of wild auburn curls, and Ian challenged Kenneth to an arm-wrestling match.
    “Aren’t you supposed to be working?” Amabel asked Olivia, her gaze sharp despite the fact that she’d already tossed back two shots of whiskey.
    The woman can hold her liquor
, Olivia thought grimly. “I’m one of the managers. Trust me, this isn’t the first time I’ve spent my shift in the bar. It’s one of the few perks of being in the restaurant business. When interesting people come to town, I hang out with them and make sure they’re given the best possible service.” She gave Amabel a little smile and then reached for a calamari.
    Olivia fell silent and let Millay work her magic. She plied the storytellers with questions about their craft and subtly flattered each of them in turn. She even pretended not to notice when Greg brushed his elbow against her arm or breast, skillfully steering the conversation back to the topic of Violetta again and again.
    “But who would have killed her?” Millay asked Greg, her dark eyes guileless. “Did she sleep with the wrong guy or something?”
    A shadow passed across Greg’s face, and he immediately shifted his body away from Millay’s.
    Ian gave a theatrical sigh. “She was so beautiful that she could have had any man she wanted. But she never got married or brought a guy to any of our retreats. And I didn’t see her hanging out with anyone special here.”
    “But
I
did,” Mariah declared triumphantly. “Well, I didn’t see him, but I
heard
him. Violetta had a man in her hotel room Thursday night.” Her speech was slightly slurred. “And he didn’t come to talk either. My room’s right next to hers so I got an earful. Violetta’s lover was
very
passionate. Lots of stamina.” She stroked Ian’s huge bicep and gave him a suggestive smile.
    “Who was her mystery man?” Millay asked.
    Mariah shrugged. “She didn’t exactly call out his name, sweetheart.” Giggling, she took another sip of her drink.
    Olivia decided she’d better have some food brought to the table or the storytellers would become too inebriated to talk. She signaled a waiter who returned to the table several minutes later carrying servings of roasted shrimp cocktail with a spicy orange-tomato dipping sauce. By the time the shrimp cocktail was gone and the group had been given a salad tossed with fresh avocado and mango, Olivia still couldn’t tell if any of the men at the