How to Party with a Killer Vampire Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  How to Host a Killer Vampire Party

  Teaser chapter

  Praise for Penny Warner’s Party-Planning Mystery Series

  How to Survive a Killer Séance

  “Event planner Presley Parker is throwing a party at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, and you just know all those corridors and secret rooms will be the perfect setting for a murder.... Downright fun.”

  —Contra Costa Times

  “Presley Parker is a delightful event host, and this entertaining mystery captures the ins and outs of planning a séance. . . . Delightfully entertaining.”

  —Mysterious Reviews

  “Unforgettable characters, information, and humor all in one divine package. Treat yourself to this one as soon as possible.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “[A]n entertaining read, full of unique characters and breezy prose. The setting is unique, the structure is smart, and the pacing is quick.... Presley otherwise makes for a strong, smart, funny protagonist for whom readers will want to root.”

  —The Season for Romance

  “Presley is a creative, energetic young woman with a wry sense of humor.”

  —The Mystery Reader

  How to Crash a Killer Bash

  “[Warner] delights her audience with colorful and lively characters, intriguing suspense, and fun party-planning tips. If you’re looking for a lighthearted, fast-moving story with enough polish and pizzazz to keep your interest popping to the very last page, look no further than this party-hearty book.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Exactly what a modern cozy should be: light and playful, a little romance mixed with a little mystery, and thoroughly enjoyable start to finish.”

  —Mysterious Reviews

  “The mystery is well plotted, [and] there are plenty of clues and plenty of suspects, letting readers guess along with Presley.”

  —The Mystery Reader

  “I highly recommend this book to all mystery readers, cozy [fans] or not. This is a party that you don’t want to miss.”

  —Once Upon a Romance Reviews

  “The Killer Party series is delightful!”

  —Meritorious Mysteries

  “Presley Parker is a protagonist who readers can’t help but like. She’s been down on her luck but lands on her feet when she comes up with the idea for an event-planning business. For a mystery series, it’s a near-perfect occupation.”

  —MysteriesGalore.com

  “Penny Warner has created a wonderful heroine in perilous Presley Parker. . . . With plenty of action on her investigation and several poignant moments, readers will enjoy the perils of Presley Parker.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  “The second Party-Planner mystery is a delightful whodunit due to a strong lead and the eccentric cast who bring a flavor of San Francisco to life.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “Plenty of motives and suspects . . . a cast of lively characters.”

  —Gumshoe

  How to Host a Killer Party

  “Penny Warner’s scintillating How to Host a Killer Party introduces an appealing heroine whose event skills include utilizing party favors in self-defense in a fun, fast-paced new series guaranteed to please.”

  —Carolyn Hart, Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity award–winning author of Dead by Midnight

  “A party you don’t want to miss.”

  —Denise Swanson, New York Times bestselling author of Murder of a Bookstore Babe

  “Penny Warner dishes up a rare treat, sparkling with wicked and witty San Francisco characters, plus some real tips on hosting a killer party.”

  —Rhys Bowen, award-winning author of the Royal Spyness and Molly Murphy mysteries

  “There’s a cozy little party going on between these covers.”

  —Elaine Viets, author of the Dead-End Job mysteries

  “Fast, fun, and fizzy as a champagne cocktail! The winning and witty Presley Parker can plan a perfect party—but after her A-list event becomes an invitation to murder, her next plan must be to save her own life.”

  —Hank Phillippi Ryan, Agatha Award–winning author of Drive Time

  “The book dishes up a banquet of mayhem.”

  —Oakland Tribune (CA)

  “Grab this book.... It will leave you in stitches.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “Frantic pace, interesting characters.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “These days some of the hottest crime fiction revolves around caterers and chefs. The latest author to venture into culinary mystery territory is Danville’s Penny Warner, whose Bay Area hero—party planner Presley Parker—runs into homicidal high jinks all over the Bay Area, starting with an Alcatraz wedding gone awry.”

  —Contra Costa Times

  The Party-Planning Mystery Series

  How to Host a Killer Party

  How to Crash a Killer Bash

  How to Survive a Killer Séance

  OBSIDIAN

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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  First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, October 2011

  Copyright © Penny Warner, 2011

  All rights reserved

  OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a 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.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-54472-3

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To the partyers in my life—my family. And to party planners everywhere—you know what I’m talking about. . . .

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to everyone who helped in some way with this book: Colleen Casey, Janet Finsilver, Staci McLaughlin, Ann Parker, Carole Price, Sue Warner, the city of Colma, my wonderful agents Andrea Hurst and Amberly Finarelli, and my incredible editor, Sandy Harding.

  “I figured that, if you do a vampire movie in Hollywood, you’ve made it.”

  —Christopher Atkins

  Chapter 1

  PARTY-PLANNING TIP #1

  With the popularity of vampires today, why not host a Vampire Party! Take your pick from The Twilight Saga, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, or Anne Rice’s Lestat. Or give your party some bite and invite all of them!

  It should have been a dark and stormy night, à la Hollywood, but the October moon was full and the sky cloudl
ess. I stood quietly in the cemetery, feeling as if I were viewing a film. But there were no cameras, and this was no movie.

  I watched as the tall, pale twentysomething man dressed in tight black jeans and a black chest-hugging T-shirt suddenly appeared from out of nowhere. He seemed to glide toward the wide-eyed, raven-haired young woman who waited for him. She wore a white, flowing dress, sheer and low-cut, that displayed her obviously enhanced breasts. Leaning seductively against a towering headstone, her long hair swirling in the night breeze, she smiled at the man in black approaching her. He held a glass of bloodred wine, his glowing eyes fixed on her.

  I felt like a voyeur, but I couldn’t take my eyes off this mesmerizing couple.

  He offered her the glass, not taking his eyes from hers. There was palpable chemistry between these two people. “This is very old wine. I hope you’ll like it.”

  She wrapped a porcelain hand around the stem, her red-lacquered fingernails tinkling against the glass. “Aren’t you drinking?” she asked, her eyes reflecting the bright spotlights. She took a sip.

  Staring at her with intense dark eyes, the young man parted his full lips, revealing white teeth that glinted in the light. “I never drink wine.”

  I almost laughed out loud at the familiar line. Count Dracula had said the same thing to Renfield in the original 1939 film. But when the man in black suddenly jerked, as if having a spasm, I gasped. Seconds later he shot up into the air like a rocket and disappeared into the branches of a eucalyptus tree.

  “Awesome!” I said, clapping. I could feel my heart racing.

  I looked around, certain I’d be joined in a round of cheery applause. But when I saw frowns on the faces of those nearby, I stopped.

  “No! No! No!” Lucas Cruz yelled from behind me.

  Cruz, as everyone called him, was the eccentric producer /director at CeeGee Studios, located on Treasure Island. Five years ago, he set up his computer graphics /film company in one of the long-empty Pan Am Clipper hangars on the island. Since then, he’d produced a number of sci-fi and horror films that featured his cutting-edge special effects. One of his films had starred local San Francisco resident Robin Williams as Cosmo Topper in a remake of Topper, the popular 1937 ghost film. In spite of Robin’s talents, the movie had quickly gone to video.

  Cruz had hired me to plan a “wrap party” to celebrate—and publicize—the end of production on his latest horror film, Revenge of the Killer Vampires. I’d seen a few clips of the jump-the-shark spoof of vampire flicks that had ravaged theaters around the country. The two “hot” young stars, Jonas Jones, who played the vampire, and Angelica Brayden, the love interest, would no doubt become ET, TMI, and Gossip Guy regulars once the film debuted. And I was lucky enough to have just witnessed a preview of the skit from the movie that would be performed at tomorrow night’s party.

  The wrap party would have been simple enough to host if Cruz hadn’t wanted the event held in a cemetery—“for the ambience.” After overcoming my initial resistance, I researched the possibilities online and found a Wall Street Journal article that mentioned the growing popularity of murder mystery parties, scavenger hunts, and other events held in cemeteries. Hollywood Forever cemetery in Los Angeles projected movies onto its mausoleum walls. Davis Cemetery in California offered bird walks and poetry workshops. Others presented Shakespeare festivals, family picnics, and even weddings.

  The idea behind this: “To nurture warm feelings about the cemetery.”

  Weird, I thought, but why not?

  I made some calls but found San Francisco’s few cemeteries unreceptive to the idea. The City had been forced to move many of its cemeteries, due to rising costs of land and lack of space, and those that remained didn’t readily open their doors for entertainment purposes. But when I contacted the powers that be in neighboring Colma, I got lucky.

  While the historic town of Colma is quaint, with brick-paved roads, ornamental streetlamps, a railroad depot, a retro city hall, and ethnically diverse restaurants, Colma is best known as the final resting place for the who’s who of San Francisco’s dearly departed. Among its permanent residents are newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst; business magnate William Henry Crocker; San Francisco Chronicle founder Charles de Young; the infamous, self-proclaimed Emperor Norton; and baseball legend Joe DiMaggio. Even Sheriff Wyatt Earp came to rest in Colma. It’s now known as “the City of Souls,” and it’s also where many deceased former San Franciscans have been “relocated.” In fact, now the dead outnumber the living one and a half million to sixteen hundred.

  After Cruz paid a hefty rental fee, the city administrator agreed to let us host our party at Lawndale, one of the neglected older cemeteries that had gone bankrupt, thanks to the plethora of the more prestigious cemeteries—sixteen, to be exact—that had opened in the area.

  Cruz had quickly found the spot in the cemetery he wanted—a large open-air mausoleum with a patio, surrounded by acres of untended headstones. At the moment, production crew members from CeeGee Studios were working out the logistics of “vampire flight” gone wrong. Two men were trying to retrieve Jonas from the treetop, while others attempted to fix a glitch in the rigging that was supposed to lift the young star up and away in a dramatic disappearing act—but not up and into a tree. It looked as if Jonas, aka Count Alucard (“Dracula” spelled backward), was going to need more flying lessons and a better pulley system.

  Still, I was impressed, and I thought the party guests—the primary stars, select film crew, important media, and a few local dignitaries—would be also, at tomorrow night’s party. That is, if they weren’t too superstitious to enter a graveyard.

  I didn’t relish the idea of hosting a party in a graveyard—it seemed somewhat disrespectful—but Cruz had promised to make a large donation to the charity organization of my choice. That was something I insisted on when I hosted large parties for clients. This time I’d chosen the American Red Cross. Given the type of party, it seemed appropriate to help out an organization known for its blood drives.

  “Watch the trees, for God’s sake!” Cruz yelled as crew members adjusted the young actor’s hidden flying gear. “I want him lifted up and over that whatchacallit—that monument there—not flung around like Peter Pan on crack. This is supposed to be thrilling, not embarrassing! Reporters and photographers from TMI, Gossip Guy, and Buzz Online will be here tomorrow night!”

  Cruz ran both hands through his thinning hair, a habit he had when he was anxious or upset. It was probably why he had thinning hair. Dressed in a T-shirt, saggy jeans, and a hoodie that read “CeeGee Studios,” he looked more like a maintenance worker than the man in charge. He wasn’t the easiest person to work with, and I sensed I’d regret taking on this job, but in the past he’d helped me out with some of my parties that required unique lighting, background decor, or special effects. Consequently, even though I’d been buried under a pile of party requests since I’d hosted the Séance Party at the Winchester Mystery House, I felt I owed him and couldn’t turn him down.

  Besides, helping one another is what we Treasure Islanders do.

  While Cruz and his crew continued to work on the “disappearing Dracula” glitch, I went over final plans for the party decorations with my own crew. Tonight we were setting up the lighting, unloading the larger props, and doing logistics; tomorrow we’d turn the old mausoleum into a mini-Transylvania.