2. Death Wears a Jade Mask
A Bunny Beaudoin Mystery
When a wealthy donor drops dead at her charity gala, Fox Theater fundraiser Bunny Beaudoin finds herself thrust into a murder investigation that threatens everything she's built. Teaming up with enigmatic private investigator Dash O'Neill, Bunny discovers the victim was poisoned—and he's not the killer's first target. As bodies pile up and the theater's reputation hangs in the balance, Bunny and Dash navigate a web of secrets, lies, and dangerous attraction. Between dodging a suspicious police chief and uncovering a conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of Magnolia Heights society, Bunny must decide how far she's willing to go for justice—and whether she can trust the mysterious man who's stolen her heart. In a world where everyone has something to hide, the deadliest secret might be falling in love with your partner in crime.
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The double doors to the Egyptian Room swung open precisely at seven, releasing a flood of Magnolia Heights’ finest into the space like champagne bubbles escaping a freshly popped bottle. Bunny positioned herself strategically by the entrance, clipboard hidden behind her back, smile fixed so firmly it threatened to become a permanent facial feature.
“Mrs. Haverford! Don’t you look absolutely ravishing.” She cooed at a woman whose facelift was so tight it gave her the permanent expression of someone witnessing a minor traffic violation.
“Table four, right by the stage. Just as you requested!”
The woman patted Bunny’s arm with jewel-encrusted fingers.
“You’re a doll. Tell me, is that dreadful man from the symphony here tonight? The one with the unfortunate mustache?”
“Conductor Berenstein? No, thankfully he’s in Vienna this week,” Bunny whispered conspiratorially, “Your donation is safe from his sticky fingers.”
Mrs. Haverford cackled with delight before drifting toward her table, immediately zeroing in on her next gossip target.
For forty-five minutes, Bunny performed this elaborate social choreography—greeting, complimenting, directing, all while scanning the entrance for the evening’s potential disaster duo. Her cheeks ached from smiling, her feet already protesting against her stilettos.
Carol materialized at her side, champagne flute in hand.
“He’s here.” She murmured, nodding subtly toward the entrance.
Glen Valentino stood framed in the doorway like a villain in a corporate thriller. Tall, silver-haired, with the confident posture of a man who had never been told ‘no’ in his professional life.
“Glen,” Bunny glided forward, extending both hands in greeting, “I’m so thrilled you could make it!”
His handshake was firm, bordering on uncomfortable.
“Wouldn’t miss it. Though I must say, I was surprised to receive such a last-minute invitation.”
“Pure serendipity,” Bunny lied smoothly, “A patron had to cancel unexpectedly, and naturally, you were our first call.”
She lowered her voice.
“Between us, the board was absolutely ecstatic when you accepted.”
Valentino’s chest puffed slightly at this, exactly as Bunny had intended. Men like him were laughably predictable. Wave the promise of adoration before them, and they’d follow like trained seals after a bucket of fish.
“You’re at table seven—our premium positioning. I’ll escort you myself.”
As they navigated through the crowd, Bunny felt her phone vibrate against her hip while her stomach did cartwheels around itself. She discreetly pulled out the buzzing phone. A text from Carol: “SHE’S HERE. WITH THE NEW GUY. ABORT MISSION??”
Too late.
They had reached table seven, where a striking woman in her mid-fifties was already seated, a younger man with celebrity looks at her side. The woman’s gaze locked onto Glen, her expression shifting from relaxed enjoyment to steel-reinforced civility in a microsecond.
“Carissa.” Glen said, his voice dropping an octave.
“Glen,” She replied coolly, “What a surprise.”
Bunny felt the temperature around the table drop by several degrees.
“Glen, I believe you know most of everyone at the table,” She said brightly, as if blissfully unaware of the arctic front developing, “Carissa Levinson, of course, and this is...?”
“Adrian Collins.” The young man supplied, rising to shake Glen’s hand with the enthusiasm of someone who had no idea he was stepping into a minefield.
“I’ve followed your company’s work for years. That cholesterol medication—revolutionary stuff.”
“Indeed.” Glen replied, his eyes never leaving his ex-wife’s face.
“Though I believe my ex would characterize it differently. Something about ‘price-gouging vulnerable populations?’ That was the phrase you used during the divorce proceedings, wasn’t it, dear?”
Carissa’s smile didn’t waver.
“Along with ‘deliberate suppression of side-effect data.’ Don’t sell yourself short, Glen.”
Bunny cleared her throat.
“Well! Dinner will be served shortly. Glen, why don’t I introduce you to Judge Whitmore? He’s been asking about you all evening.”
“No need,” Glen said, settling into his chair, “I’m precisely where I want to be.”
He patted his pockets, grimaced, and glanced toward his ex-wife.
“For God’s sake, Glen,” Carissa muttered, loud enough for Bunny to hear, “You never remember to bring your own.”
She dug into her handbag and slid a foil packet across the table without making eye contact.
“Still keeping track of my digestive schedule?” Glen replied with a smirk.
“Force of habit after fifteen years of marriage. Nothing more.” Carissa’s tone was ice, but the gesture betrayed a lingering thread of something cryptic. Glen pocketed the foil package.
Bunny plastered a wider, more plastic smile on her face.
“Wonderful,” She clapped her hands together and hoped her eye didn’t twitch even as she internally cringed at the too-sweet, too-high pitched voice that came out of her own mouth, “Enjoy your evening!”
Is pulling the fire alarm still an option?
Bunny retreated, maintaining her composure until she was safely behind one of the massive Egyptian columns. There, she finally allowed herself a moment of silent screaming into her palms.
“That bad?” Carol appeared with another glass of champagne, which Bunny accepted gratefully.
“Worse. They’re like two cats circling each other, except one has a law degree and the other has enough money to buy this building.”
“Should we separate them?”
Bunny took a fortifying sip.
“No, we ride this out. Keep the alcohol flowing but not too freely. Have the servers hover around that table. Constant interruptions might prevent outright bloodshed.”
Carol nodded, already tapping instructions into her phone.
“On it. Also, Mickey’s asking when we’re starting the auction. He says the Patels are getting fidgety.”
“Tell him ten more minutes,” Bunny said, scanning the room, “We need everyone nice and liquored up before we start asking for six-figure donations.”
The evening progressed with the practiced rhythm of all such events. Dinner was served, wine flowed, Mickey took the stage in his green and gold jacket to uproarious applause. Bunny moved from table to table, gently massaging egos and bank accounts, all while keeping one eye on table seven. To her surprise, Glen and Carissa appeared to be maintaining a veneer of civility. They weren’t speaking to each other, but neither were they causing a scene. Someone at their table cracked a joke about an unfortunate encounter with a guest who could not stop talking about their ulcer while in the bathroom line. Glen laughed a loud and bellowing laugh, clearly inebriated.
“Must be the rich food.” Bunny overheard a tablemate– Harold Finch, Glen’s former business partner– reply to the joke, loosening his bow tie.
“My gut’s killing me too.”
Carissa, already annoyed by Glen’s theatrics and perhaps feeling charitable toward a fellow sufferer, reached into her clutch.
“Here,” She said, handing Harold two tablets from the foil packet, “These might help.”
Harold took the package and offered Carissa a generous smile. He ripped the foil open with his teeth and dropped the two dissolving tablets into a glass of water. Bunny couldn’t help but smile as she observed the interaction. Perhaps the evening would survive after all. She turned her eyes away from the table and checked her wristwatch for the start of the live auction. She needed to confirm one last thing before the auction became truly rambunctious. Then, she’d be in the clear. After a few minutes, Mickey’s voice boomed across the room.
“For the art lovers, our first item is a miniature sized replica of the Mask of Pakal- a stunning hand-crafted mask made of genuine jadeite jade. The original was found in the tomb of a Mayan king. Truly a magnificent art piece that you wouldn’t want to miss for your home collection.”
His face opened up into a magnificent, pearlescent grin. Bunny could almost hear the cartoon twinkle that bounced off of his teeth as she ducked out of the Egyptian Room.
“Let’s start the bidding at two-thousand dollars!”
Thundering applause receded behind her as the auctioneer doubled, tripled, and quadrupled the bidding price of the art piece.
It’s not even an original, Bunny thought as she smirked, glancing down at her watch again, Not that I'm diving in some Mayan tomb anytime soon.
Navigating around service staff clad in black, she sped through the grand salon and down the stone steps of the terrace.
“Mindy?” She called, spotting the petite figure hunched over a registration tablet.
Mindy Harcourt, the night’s registration lead, looked up with a start. Despite being in her forties, she had the wide-eyed, perpetually startled expression of someone much younger. Her brown cardigan seemed to swallow her diminutive frame, and her skinny, rectangular glasses perpetually slid down her nose.
“Oh! Bunny,” She squeaked, pushing her glasses up with a nervous gesture, “I was just about to find you.”
“Please tell me everyone’s accounted for.” Bunny asked, offering what she hoped was a reassuring smile.
Mindy nodded rapidly, her mousy brown bob bouncing with the movements.
“Yes, yes. All guests present and accounted for. Every last one.” She rifled through her stack of name badges, showing Bunny the empty tray.
“Thank you– you’re a lifesaver.” Bunny squeezed the woman’s shoulder gently.
Mindy beamed at the praise, her posture straightening momentarily before collapsing back into its habitual hunch.
“Just doing my job, Ms. Beaudoin!”
With a final smile and wave, Bunny hurried up the terrace steps. She slipped into the resplendent ballroom as Mickey ran back onto the stage after having dashed through the raucous room, collecting bid numbers for his assistants. A gaggle of young women sat to the side of the stage, furiously tallying the final bids in the dim light of the ballroom.
“Ladies and gentlemen, our next item is truly special,” He announced, not a hair out of place, “A week at a private villa in Tuscany, complete with a personal chef, daily wine tastings, and exclusive access to regional art collections not open to the public.”
Bunny watched as several paddles went up, the bidding quickly escalating to twenty thousand dollars.
“Twenty thousand to Mrs. Haverford! Do I hear twenty-five?”
Glen Valentino raised his paddle.
“Twenty-five.”
A murmur rippled through the crowd. Bunny felt her heart hammer against her chest. Now this was a change. Glen rarely bid on auction items, preferring instead to make direct donations with his name prominently attached.
Don’t panic, She thought, He’s just changing this up to show off in front of Carissa’s Mr. Dreamy.
“Twenty-five to Mr. Valentino! Do I hear thirty?”
Carissa’s paddle shot up.
“Thirty.”
The room fell silent as every head swiveled between Glen and his ex-wife.
“Thirty thousand to Ms. Levinson! Do I hear thirty-five?”
Glen’s paddle rose again, his expression impassive.
“Forty.”
Mickey blinked in surprise.
“Jumping ahead! Forty thousand to Mr. Valentino. Do I hear forty-five?”
“Fifty.” Carissa said without hesitation.
Bunny edged closer to Fenelope, who stood transfixed at the side of the stage.
“What is happening?” She whispered.
Fenelope’s lips barely moved.
“The most profitable divorce proceeding I’ve ever witnessed.”
The bidding continued its dizzying ascent—sixty thousand, seventy-five, ninety—the audience watching with the rapt attention of tennis spectators at a championship match.
“One hundred thousand dollars.” Glen finally announced, his voice carrying across the hushed room.
He directed an arrogant smile toward his ex-wife.
“Unless you’d like to explain to your clients why you’re spending their settlement funds on personal vacations?”
A collective gasp rippled through the crowd. Adrian shifted uncomfortably beside Carissa, whose face had gone completely still, like a pond freezing over.
“One hundred and fifty thousand,” She countered, her voice glacier-cold, “Consider it an investment in mental health. A week without having to think about what a monumental mistake I made in marrying you.”
The tension in the room crystallized into something tangible. Mickey glanced desperately at Bunny, clearly at a loss.
“Sold!” Fenelope suddenly called out, sweeping onto the stage, “For one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to Ms. Levinson. What extraordinary generosity!”
She began applauding, prompting the audience to join in with relieved enthusiasm. Glen stood abruptly, his chair scraping against the floor.
“I believe I need some air.” He announced to no one in particular.
Several of his tablemates rose automatically in response to his tone, including Harold who drunkenly stumbled to his feet. He lurched forward, tripping over a chair leg. Time seemed to slow as Bunny watched Harold’s trajectory toward the exit. For a bizarre moment, her mind recalled the Fox Theater’s last concert series, “Clair de Lune” performed by the Magnolia Heights Symphony. The way those first delicate piano notes had hung in the air, each one distinct yet flowing into the next like water droplets merging into a stream. The man’s body now moved with that same terrible, beautiful fluidity.
His arms windmilled outward, grasping at nothing, finding no purchase in the empty air. His torso pitched forward at precisely the angle she’d seen dancers achieve during the theater’s production of Swan Lake; a controlled fall that was, in this case, anything but controlled. The opening notes of “Clair de Lune” replayed in her mind. Those three simple, ascending notes that promised such tender beauty. But instead of the gentle continuation of the masterpiece, Bunny heard the sickening crack as Harold’s temple connected with the sharp edge of the glass doors.
The music in her head stopped abruptly.
A dark pool spread in a perfect crescendo, expanding with the same measured inevitability as those piano notes, but inverted, descending now into something final and irrevocable. Blood bloomed across the pristine floor like spilled merlot, obscenely vivid against the marble surface. The man lay stock still.
“Someone call an ambulance!” A member of the wait staff shouted, already pushing through the panicked crowd and yanking Bunny from her black-and-white reverie.
Bunny stumbled forward, pulling out her phone while dropping to her knees beside the fallen associate.
“Sir? Sir, can you hear me?”
His eyes stared blankly upward, unfocused and dilating rapidly. Where the conductor had created light dancing on water, here was only a darkening void, pupils expanding like the universe in reverse, collapsing toward nothingness.
“I need an ambulance at the Fox Theater, Egyptian Room.” Bunny spoke into her phone, her voice surprisingly steady despite the uncontrollable shaking of her hands.
“We have a man down with a severe head injury.”
The chaos around her continued—gasps, screams, the rustle of expensive fabric as patrons recoiled in horror—but Bunny remained strangely detached, as if watching the scene from the theater’s upper balcony. In the Fox’s acoustics, even whispers carried to the back row, yet the man before her made no sound at all. Bunny felt a burning in her throat, then queasiness. As she looked closer at his increasingly blank face, a terrible certainty settled in her stomach. The final notes of the imagined piano piece faded into silence, leaving only the harsh reality of what lay before her. The commotion, the screams, Mickey trying to maintain order from the stage. It all receded as she met Fenelope’s gaze across the fallen patron.
This was no medical emergency.
A man was dead.
Before she could stop herself, Bunny turned her head towards the marble floor and vomited up the last of her champagne.