Page 50 of The Anniversary Party

Joy screamed, “You’re a doctor, help him!”

“I’m sorry. There’s no help for him,” Bodhi said.

Paul tried to push Bodhi aside. “For crying out loud, give him mouth to mouth.”

“No! Don’t go near him! Nobody touch him!” Bodhi shouted.

Daniel and Leo each grabbed one of the wrestler’s arms and yanked him away from the corpse. Sasha stared in disbelief at Grady’s lifeless body.

Bodhi’s eyes flitted around the room, settling on the bar. “Hank, Aroostine,” he said in the sharpest voice Sasha had ever heard him use.

They hurried over.

“Stand in front of that bar. Don’t let anyone touch anything on it.”

They did as he asked while Paul struggled against Leo and Daniel’s grip.

“Carl and Chris, please take these folks into the library,” Bodhi said calmly.

Carl and Chris hurried to round up Rex’s friends and family. Leeza wandered toward the door, her cocktail glass still in her hand.

“No,” Bodhi pointed toward her. “Put that down. Nobody eats or drinks anything that’s been in this room.”

Leeza skittered toward the table, wide-eyed, and abandoned her glass. Leo and Daniel strong-armed her husband toward the door and passed him off to Chris and Carl.

“You guys got him from here?” Daniel asked.

They nodded. Brian added in a fierce voice, “Don’t worry. I’ll lend a hand if anyone gets out of line.”

“Thanks,” Leo told him.

When Rex’s guests had filed out of the room, Sasha turned to Leo, her hand trembling. “You didn’t see it, did you?”

“No, I was in the hall. I heard the scream.” He took her hands and held them securely in his.

“That was Grady,” Maisy said shakily. “It was otherworldly.”

“And then he collapsed,” Aroostine said in an incredulous voice. “It happened so fast.”

“He was poisoned,” Bodhi said.

Not ‘I think he’s been poisoned,’ ‘it appears he’s been poisoned,’ or ‘he may have been poisoned.’ There was no shading or hedging. It was a statement of declarative certainty.

“How can you be so sure?” Sasha asked him.

His warm eyes searched her face. “This is a classic cyanide poisoning. Cyanide salts are extremely lethal, often instantly fatal. A hallmark of cyanide poisoning is the so-called death scream of the victim before he begins having seizures, finally collapsing, often with a froth at the mouth. And do you know what cyanide smells like?”

“Almonds,” Sasha breathed.

“Bitter almonds,” he confirmed.

“Whoever poisoned Grady knew that even if he caught the scent, there’d be no reason to think anything of it. He was eating almond-flavored cake and drinking almond liqueur,” Aroostine said slowly.

Sasha eyed the glasses of mostly full cocktails and plates of half-eaten cake on the table and thanked the heavens that she’d only sipped her drink and nibbled at her slice of cake.

“So, you think someone put cyanide in the cake or the drinks?” Maisy asked. “That’s insane. Unless they were intending to cause a mass murder/suicide. Any one of us could have died.”

Sasha turned to the bar and snapped her fingers. “No, the lemon peel. Grady is the only person who had a candied lemon twist instead of candied orange.”

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