Death by Midnight

  Copyright © 2024 by A.J. Rivers

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  Also by A.J. Rivers

  Cheers echo through the air, punctuating singing and continuous laughter.

  Sunbeams that seem to have broken through a gray sky that has pressed down on the tiny island town of Twilight Cove for the last several days sparkle on plastic beads in shades of purple, green, and gold as they’re being tossed from the dazzling floats gliding by.

  Everyone along the parade route watches in awe as the krewes dance and strut past, waving from behind elaborate masks and glittering, over-the-top costumes.

  The celebration bubbles and sparkles like the glasses of champagne that eager mouths anticipate being flowing like water tonight at the party. It will keep going right up until the stroke of midnight when Mardi Gras will end and Ash Wednesday will begin.

  This is a day that the people of Twilight Cove look forward to all year. Preparations for next year’s festivities will begin as soon as the parade floats pull into the warehouse and the final sips of hurricanes and cocktails chase away the last of the carnival season before the quiet time of Lent. Soon all the decorations will be gone, and people will begin preparing in earnest for Easter. But for now, all they are thinking about is the parade unfurling like satin ribbon and glitter in front of them.

  The most anticipated part of the parade, the Unveiling of the King, is coming, and no one wants to miss the moment.

  Every year, a member of the community is invited to be the king and ride through the parade on a massive float designed specifically for the purpose. This year the float is given a new feature. The throne is built on a platform designed to rise from inside the float to present the king in his finery to all the onlookers. It’s his duty to encourage more frivolity and festivity among his subjects, fueling the celebration for the rest of the afternoon as street parties and lavish feasts lead up to the grand finale of the night.

  The daytime activities are family-friendly to encourage everyone in town to be a part of the holiday, but when the sun goes down, the festivities become purely for adults. Dissolving into debauchery, the nighttime parties are about indulgence and total lack of inhibition.

  For the fortunate ones, that means an invitation to the party at Joseph Palmer’s palatial waterfront home. Like walking into the time of Gatsby, the party is the hottest invitation of the season, and everyone covets a spot on the lustrous floor. To be welcomed into the party for Mardi Gras is like being touched by the glitter-dusted fingers of a nymph—magical, fantastical, and frequently the harbinger of questionable choices.

  The king’s float glides into view, which whips up the crowd into an even greater intensity. Those who had already seen the float go by wouldn’t have gotten a chance to see the king rise out of the float, so many of them ran down from their original spots and are now crushing into the already tight space so they don’t miss it. Some of those already standing at the curb are getting pushed from behind and stumbling into the road, but they hurriedly get back to their places.

  There’s a general feeling of breaths being held as the float slows and the throne rises from the internal compartment. The king, Scott Russo, is resplendent in a gold-and-purple mask and headdress that corresponds with his elaborate uniform. He looks nothing short of royal as he sits on the massive throne. Everyone waits for him to stand up and wave at the crowd. Their hands itch for the special strands of beads only the king throws out at each parade. They are desired commodities that earn extra treats and indulgences later in the night. Many in town take great pride in the collections of strands they display in their home every Mardi Gras season.

  Nothing happens.

  The onlookers get louder. The king must be playing coy. He wants to be entertained by his subjects. He wants them to earn the privilege of his attention. They cheer harder, jumping up and down, waving their arms, some even tossing the beads they already have onto the float to him.

  Nothing happens.

  The king doesn’t move.

  As time slips by and the sound of the rest of the parade gets quieter, the space between the entries gets longer as the band plays him in and the dancers around them run through their routine until they finish. Confusion starts to filter through the crowd.

  Something isn’t right.

  The king should have gotten up and greeted them all by now. He should have tossed out handfuls of beads and then continued along the route to delight those still waiting for him.

  The stillness is unnerving.

  One of the attendants on the float, the members of the king’s royal court, tries to keep up the enthusiasm of the revelers, but they know something is wrong. One walks up to the king and puts on a playful pantomime of wondering what’s going on and asking if he might be asleep. Some laughter bubbles up from the crowd, but the sound of merriment is dying.

  “Your Majesty,” the attendant says. He’s dressed like a jester, with bells on his hat and curled toes on his boots. “Your public awaits. If it is your pleasure, please favor us with a greeting!”

  Nothing happens.

  Another of the attendants walks up to the jester and whispers something to him, then steps up to the throne. She leans in close and pulls back suddenly, nearly stumbling into the jester. He takes her by the shoulders and sets her aside. Some in the crowd continue to laugh, easily convinced that this is all part of the performance and they are being strung along for the amusement of the king. They feel promised a dramatic reveal. They get it.

  The jester touches the king’s shoulder, giving it a gentle shake to try to rouse him. His head falls to the side, causing a gasp to ripple through the people gathered on either side of the street. A few start to trickle forward, but they are stopped by the security officers walking alongside the float.

  “What’s going on?” someone shouts, generating a cascade of similar questions and demands.

  The jester jostles Scott Russo a little harder, but there’s still no response. He realizes his body isn’t moving the way he would have expected and touches his arm. He jumps back, looking horrified. He steps forward again and moves one of the voluminous sleeves of the king’s costume aside, revealing cords wrapped tightly around his arm, lashing him to the throne. His gloved hands hang loosely, no tension in them anymore.

  “Is there a doctor?” the jester calls out to the crowd of onlookers. “A doctor anywhere?”

  A woman rushes forward, and the attendants help her onto the float. The jester keeps his voice low as he mutters something to her and she goes to the throne. Touching Scott Russo’s neck, she pauses, then she hurriedly tries to grab one wrist before realizing the binds are too tight to search for his pulse. She gingerly pushes back his mask, and those closest to the float can see Russo’s battered, bloodied face. A scream breaks through the whispers and questions.

  The doctor pulls the mask back down, the extravagance now seeming ghoulish and grotesque even as she strives to protect some of Scott Russo’s dignity as well as the crowd. She looks at the jester with wide, horrified eyes.

  “He’s dead.”

  I brace myself and reach up to wipe down the wall sconce in the upstairs hallway. It’s not a frequently used part of the house, and I’m not sure what’s going to happen when I touch the elaborate metal. Nothing immediately shoots out at me or comes down from the ceiling or anything when my rag com
es in contact with the sconce, and I breathe a sigh of relief before proceeding to clean it thoroughly. I am under no delusion that just because nothing happened the first time I touched it, nothing will happen at all. It’s entirely possible there is a time-lapse trigger, or maybe I have to move it in a specific way to unleash whatever absurdity may be contained inside. I’m just choosing at this minute to ignore that.

  Cleaning the Harlan house always carries this kind of uncertainty. I’ve learned most of the little gadgets and booby traps Xavier hid around the house years ago and have either disarmed them or know how to avoid them, but I’ve also gotten accustomed to the sense that I will never really know everything that lurks within the sprawling house. This place has been my home for years now, and yet in a lot of ways, I’m still getting to know it. There are areas of it that we don’t use very often. There are also inventions that Xavier has forgotten about or still thinks are a great idea and continuously puts back in place even after I’ve taken them down. I have yet to convince him that a candelabra that flies off a wall, through the air, and across a room to reach a person at the bottom of the steps for emergency light is not only impractical but is also just asking for someone to get smashed in the head.

  He references the possibility of losing electricity in a storm and wants to know how I would get up the stairs in darkness. The illumination of my phone is not an acceptable response because I could have left it somewhere else. The battery might be dead, and it wouldn’t provide ample adherence to the general atmosphere of a thunderstorm. Those who know Xavier will know that the last one is truly the most important to him.

  I finish cleaning the wall sconce and move on to the next one. As soon as I touch it, a segment of the wall across the hall drops down. I hit the carpet, but nothing happens. I stay down for a few seconds to make sure it’s safe and carefully stand up to peer into the open section of the wall. I have no idea what used to be inside there and am not particularly sure I want to know. All that matters is that it isn’t there now and I’m still in one piece.

  Finding all these gadgets, and what Xavier affectionately refers to as doodads, throughout the house carries a hint of sadness for me. He always tells me that he invented these things for the fun of it and as a way to enhance his house and raise the resale value. I’m not sure who he thinks would be so intrigued by flying candelabras and the occasional projectile coming out of the walls that they would snap up the house because of it, but that is what lives in his head.

  I can’t help but think, though, that some of them stem from the sense of fear and lack of control Xavier deals with on a daily basis. Though most of the inventions weren’t designed to cause any kind of bodily harm, others are—or at least were at one time—dangerous and put in place to keep people from getting too close.

  Downstairs, I hear the front door open.

  “Dean?” Xavier calls.

  His voice sounds small and muffled by the distance between this floor and the door.

  “I’m up here,” I call down.

  Gathering my supplies, I head down to the next level of the house and peer down from the open side of the hallway to where they are standing.

  “Send down the candle,” Xavier says.

  I trigger the candelabra, and Cupcake squeals with delight as Xavier catches it out of the air. He disconnects it from the wire that carries it and opens a tiny panel in the wall behind him to reveal an assortment of lighters and matches contained within a fire-safe box. I thought the existence of that box and the difficulty that would go into actually finding and opening it during a blackout was a further kink in his candle plan when I first heard about it. That is, until he showed me the tiny, glowing indicators that delineate the edge of the box in the dark.

  Xavier lights the candle, and they walk up the stairs together. Cupcake holds the hem of her skirt out like she’s pretending to be wearing a grand gown. I would really love a chance sometime to roam around in either one of their brains just for a little bit. With Cupcake’s sparkle and eccentricity and Xavier being Xavier, it would be an adventure.

  “What are you doing up here?” Xavier asks when they get to the landing. He blows out the candle so he can beckon back the holder that carries it and put it back in place on the wall.

  “I told you I was going to do some spring cleaning today,” I tell him. “We’ve been spending so much time in Sherwood. It felt like it really needed it.”

  “You know, the concept of spring cleaning has several historical and religious origins. It’s thought to be associated with the Jewish observance of Passover when they remove all hametz, or leavening and leavened products, from the house in order to honor their survival on unleavened bread and to show gratefulness. Persian New Year also coincides with the beginning of spring and involves thorough cleaning, which is referred to in that culture as ‘shaking the house.’

  “Historically speaking, the basic practice of thoroughly cleaning the home in the spring is thought to go back for centuries. Though more recently, it was done because before electricity was widespread, houses were lit with whale oil and kerosene and heated using wood and coal. This created a film of soot and wholly unpleasant grime on everything throughout the house. The only way to get the house clean again was to open all the windows and give everything a very thorough sweeping and scrubbing. That could only be done once the weather was warm enough that the need for heating was gone and the windows could be left open comfortably.

  “All that aside, it’s also just basic human nature. The cold weather and shorter spans of sunlight stimulate higher production of melatonin, which creates sleepiness. Essentially, everybody feels like a slug and doesn’t want to get up and do the hard work of cleaning. But then spring comes, the sun comes back, everything thaws, and people have energy again. Then they notice the condition they’ve allowed their houses to get into and the festivities of spring cleaning begin,” he says.

  “Thank you, X,” I say. “I’m not sure I’d go straight to festivities when I’m thinking about cleaning, but I appreciate the sentiment.”

  “Well, how’s about something a bit more fun?” he asks.

  There’s a hint of mischief in his voice and a sparkle in his eyes that could mean just about anything, which makes me very wary.

  “What is it that you have in mind?” I ask.

  “I haven’t been to the farm in a while,” he says, referencing the piece of land he purchased a few months back after a case found us visiting it and he discovered it was all but abandoned. “And Cupcake has never seen it. I thought we could go out there for a visit.”

  “Sure, we can go hang out at the farm,” I tell him.

  “For a couple of days,” he says.

  “What?” I ask.

  “When was the last time we went camping?” Xavier asks.

  “We have never been camping,” I tell him, then backtrack. “Actually, no. I’m going to amend myself there. We have been camping. We went to that campground while I was trying to figure out why I woke up next to a corpse in the middle of the woods. But we stayed in a cabin, and there is no cabin at the farm.”

  “So, we can do some real camping,” he says. “Get back to nature.”

  “The closest thing to nature that you commune with on a regular basis is the patio when you bring the sourdough babies out for their afternoon activity time,” I point out to him.

  “All the more reason to get out there,” he says. “I need exposure to the elements.”

  I’m not sure that is exactly what he meant, but I decide not to delve any further into that.

  “How about you, Cupcake?” I ask. “How do you feel about camping?”

  “I love camping,” she says. “I have a selection of campfire blankets just for the occasion.”

  That wasn’t the answer I was anticipating, but it seems it has locked me into a couple of days of being out in the semi-wilderness with Xavier and Cupcake.

  “We should invite Emma and Sam,” I say.

  “I think she’s pretty well engulfed in her case right now and wouldn’t see the soul-enriching benefit of a tent and perfectly toasted marshmallows,” Xavier says. “But you can try.”

  It turns out Xavier was right. About the tent and the marshmallows. Emma turns down the invitation to come along with us, and by late afternoon, the three of us are at the nearest outdoor adventure store bulking up our camping supplies. And by that, I mean buying everything we could possibly need to supplement the single sleeping bag neatly tucked in the corner of the storage room and a large cooler. I didn’t bring any of my outdoor stuff with me when I moved here to be with Xavier, so we’re starting fresh.