Died to Match (11 page)

The Mad Russian Florist was an oversized man, and his workroom was built to scale. There were long sturdy design tables and vast humming storage coolers, with skylights high overhead and exposed brick walls bearing shelves of supplies and photographs of various floral triumphs. The fanciest restaurants in Seattle relied on Boris, and savvy wedding planners booked him a year ahead.

Boris’ private office, as far as anyone could tell, was in his car, and his employee break room was a samovar in the corner and an alley behind the building, perpetually blue with the smoke of Russian cigarettes. The workroom itself smelled like springtime, like roses and freesias and lilies of the valley all at once, which was why I loved to visit. And today, of course, I had an ulterior motive.

“I must work while we talk,” he said, nodding at a half-completed biedermeier on one table.

Biedermeiers are formal bouquets made in concentric circles, each tightly-packed ring composed of a different flower. This one had a center of creamy white tulips surrounded by pink lisianthus, then a ring of deeper pink sweetheart roses. A pile of hydrangea blossoms, white and palest blue, lay ready to form the lacy outer border. At the far end of the room the Sergeis came and went, but this bouquet was getting the Boris touch. He never staffed out the bride’s flowers.

I perched on a stool to watch. “That’s charming. Who’s it for?”

“Bah, a silly liddle girl who will not appreciate. I should give her kharnations and cabbage leaves. Bring us tea.”

The deep-seated belief that women were born to serve had been a sticking point when I dated Boris, but now that he was just one of my top vendors, I had no problem with drawing him a steaming glass from the samovar.

“None for you?”

“Not just now.” I knew from sad experience what the smoky devil’s brew would do to my stomach lining. We talked briefly about Mercedes, and I explained that the wedding was proceeding despite her death. “So what’s the plan for the EMP flowers?”

“The sketches are over there. Bring them.”

Some florists just list the plant variety and number of stems for each vase or bouquet, but Boris made these wonderful colored-chalk sketches. I fetched the folder marked “Lamott” and spread them out on the worktable.

“Wow! Double wow.”

“EMP is big and loud, it needs big loud flowers.”

These were loud, all right. Elizabeth’s gown was sizzling orange chiffon, strapless, with a shoulder wrap of cherry
pink gauze. Sort of Academy Awards meets the Tequila Sunrise. The bouquet Boris had envisioned was a thick pillar of frilly red-orange gloriosa lilies, rising like a snow cone from an electric green cloud of lady’s mantle. Strange, but perfect for the dress. The bridesmaids, in their glamour-girl gowns, would each carry a dozen coral calla lilies clasped around a hot magenta heart of parrot tulips. The centerpieces for the buffet were equally audacious, mixing peonies, poppies, ranunculus, and amaryllis in a splendid clash of pink, crimson, orange, and scarlet.

“Very nice, Boris. Very cutting edge. And the bouton-nieres?”

“Tiny calla lilies, with a puff of lady’s mantle.” He gave a puff of air as he said it, just to make me laugh. “You can approve this for Lamott?”

“Yep. Where do I sign?”

“Only to initial the sketches, please. Next week I have sketches for you for the Christmas wedding, the Buckmeister.” He looked up from the snowdrift of petals on the table, his blunt brown fingers deft and gentle among the pale blossoms as he nestled each one in place. “She trusts you, Lamott. Everyone trusts you.”

“Even you, Boris?”

He grinned wolfishly “I trust no one but Boris and Irina. But you, a little, yes. I have a question for you. Private question.”

“Shoot.” I was impatient to work the conversation around to Corinne. I didn’t have long to wait.

“Someone from Solveto’s tells me,” he said, “that Corinne Campbell is almost drowning. She fell from pier at your party?”

“Almost drowned,” I corrected automatically. Boris liked
help with his English. “Well, she ended up in the water, yes. I’m not sure how.”

“She is all right now?”

“Yes, she’s all right. She was in the hospital overnight—”

“This I know! I hear of it in the morning and I think, I should go to her bedside! She needs me! But I don’t go.”

“Why not? You two were pretty close for a while.”

He gave a rumbling growl. “Not close enough, for Corinne.”

“Yes, you mentioned that she wanted to get married. That’s not so unreasonable, is it?”

“Unreasonable all of a sudden!” he protested. “We are having fun, we are making frequent love, then like that”—he snapped his fingers—“she is different voman. Tears, sighing, no making love, merry me, merry me.”

“And why didn’t you want to marry her?”

He shrugged. “If I wanted or not wanted, no difference. I am merried already.”

“Boris!” I exclaimed, forgetting Corinne momentarily. “You and I… we… you’re married?! Why didn’t you tell me?”

He waved his arms and the biedermeier nearly went flying. “Do not shout at me, Kharnegie! Did you vant to merry me? Did you?”

“That’s not the point.”

“No, you did not vant. So what does it matter to you if I have wife in St. Petersburg? Besides, I have asked her for divorce.”

“Did you tell Corinne that?”

“Of course not! Would only encourage her.”

I gave up. “OK, just tell me this. Do you think Corinne was so upset about breaking up with you that she would try to commit suicide?”

“She fell on purpose?”

“I really don’t know. I’d like to help her out, if I can.”

Boris pursed his lips, giving the question judicious thought. “Why drown? Why not shoot?”

“You mean shoot herself? For starters, she’d need a gun—”

“She has gun.”

“She does?”

He nodded. “For protection, for woman living alone. Liddle gun, but she had lessons for it. Bring more tea.”

When I returned with his glass, he was frowning intently as he tucked florets of hydrangea in a final lacy ring around the sweetheart roses. “Of course, Corinne is upset when we break up. I am magnificent lover, she said so. Why did you not ever say how magnificent I am, Kharnegie?”

“It must have slipped my mind. Seriously, Boris, would Corinne drown herself over losing you?”

The blue-flame eyes narrowed. “Seriously… no. To drown for love, you must have a big soul, a Russian soul. Corinne, she is perfect for fun, but her soul is small. It must be that she fell. You are sure she is not harmed? You are the one who I can ask.”

“I promise, I saw her with my own eyes. Her priest was taking her home. Maybe you should call her?” If someone really tried to kill Corinne, she could use some big, strong company. And who knows, maybe there were divorce papers on the way from St. Petersburg. “I’m sure she’d like to see you.”

“No, no, no. I wish her to be well, I do not wish her to be with me. Not now.” He lifted the biedermeier and twirled it in one hand, an exquisite little carousel. Then he strode across the room to a rack of ribbon spools and pulled off two lengths, one of narrow pink brocade and the other of white
velvet cord. He twisted the two loosely together and tied them in an intricate bow around the stems, leaving four long fluttering strands. Then he presented the finished bouquet to me.

“As I said, it’s charming.”

“It is yours.”

“Mine? Boris, that’s for a bride!”

“I make her another.” He pressed it into my hands. “This one is yours.”

I lifted the flowers to my face, pink and cream and misty blue with a heavenly scent. “But why?”

He reached over and touched my cheek. “Because Kharnegie, your soul is not so small. You are in love these days?”

“No! Well, maybe. Maybe I am.”

“I thought so. Be happy, Kharnegie.”

Irina’s twinkling eyes followed me as I left with the bouquet, and I caught some admiring glances on my way back to the van. I set the flowers carefully on the seat beside me, and was so entranced with them as I pulled out of the lot that at first I thought the hideous clanking noise was coming from somewhere else. But no, it was Vanna White, issuing a violent racket that didn’t stop even when I hit the brakes and pulled to the curb. The clamor was unbearable, which I found out later is not unusual when an engine throws a piston rod that impales the oil pan like an arrow through an apple.

People up and down the block stopped to stare as Vanna gave a final bang! and expired in agony. A gray-haired woman rushed out of a T-shirt shop, her eyes huge with alarm.

“What was that noise? Was it a gunshot?”

“No, ma’am,” I said sadly. “That was the sound of hell freezing over.”

“W
HAT DOES THAT MEAN, YOU THREW A ROD?
” “It probably means a couple thousand dollars.” “Good heavens, Carrie! Do you have enough money?” I do now. “Don’t worry, Mom. I’ve got it covered.” It was Tuesday, the day after my visit to Nevsky Brothers, and Mom had called to chat. Having just gotten off the phone with Pete, my mechanic, I unwisely mentioned to her that Vanna was due for major surgery. As I sat in my living room, admiring the biedermeier bouquet, I hastened to find a less alarming topic.

“Listen, Mom, you’ll like this. I’m going to be a bridesmaid for one of my clients.”

“Oh, fun!” My mother had a somewhat oversimplified view of what I did for a living, so she saw no problem in my pulling double-duty for Elizabeth. She also believed that I had a lovely figure. “Is it the Christmas wedding?”

“No, the November one, at the Experience Music Project.”

“Well, how nice. You’ll send me one of the wedding photographs?” “Absolutely.”

“What’s your gown like?” “It’s… pink. Very pink. In fact, I have to go get fitted
right this minute. Lily’s working a late shift today, so she’s going to drive me there. I haven’t gotten a rental car yet. I’ll call you later, OK?”

In the Volvo on the way up to the Capitol Hill neighborhood, I filled Lily in on my conversation with Boris, and she played devil’s advocate. It’s good to have a friend who’s willing to challenge you, but Lily was more than willing.

“So,” she summed up, “this Corinne person claims she was pushed in the harbor to drown. Most people, including her priest and the Seattle Police Department, think she’s just covering up the fact that she got drunk and tried to kill herself. But you believe that whoever killed Mercedes Montoya also tried to kill Corinne.”

“Yes.”

“And what makes you a better judge of the situation than the cops and the church?”

I thought that over while she found parking around the corner from Stephanie’s Styles, a stately little 1920s home tucked into a long block of brick-front businesses on Olive Way. It had finally quit raining, but the sky was still low and leaden.

“Lily, I keep thinking about the look in Corinne’s eyes when she told me about it. She didn’t seem self-pitying or deceitful. She was terrified.” I reached into the backseat for my tote bag, which today contained a selection of lingerie and a pair of low-heeled, not-yet-dyed silk pumps. “Actually, you’ll meet her in a minute, so you can form your own impression.”

“You sure the bride doesn’t mind my being here for this?”

“She’s just relieved that I agreed to do it at all. Wait till you see these dresses.”

Stephanie Stevens was quaint as a cameo, small and pink,
just the person you’d want to order your wedding gown from. She bustled cheerily around her lavender-scented, flowered-chintz shop with a tape measure dangling from her neck and a wristband pincushion at the ready, and she liked nothing better than to serve up tea and currant scones on her favorite Limoges china. The fact that her split-level on Vashon Island boasted a giant satellite-TV dish so that Stephanie could catch every basketball game ever broadcast on Earth, was a fact that rarely came up over tea. She also raised Rottweilers. Go figure.

“Carnegie! How nice to see you, as always. And this time you’re going to wear one of the dresses that you ordered! The other girls are already here.”

Stephanie had kept the original living room of the house as a reception area, adding only a long wall mirror and a small platform for the customers to stand on while she adjusted their hems. The dining room beyond was filled with racks of dresses and beautifully gowned mannequins, and a study to one side served as a changing room. We could hear Elizabeth’s voice and Angela’s laughter through the paneled oak door. I was introducing Lily to Stephanie when the “other girls” filed out, falling self-consciously silent when they saw they had an audience.

Elizabeth came out first, followed by her sister and maid of honor, Patty Lamott. At close range and without accessories, the bride looked rather garish in her movie-star satin gown the color of orange sherbet, and her cherry-popsicle chiffon stole. But after all the fittings I’d seen, I could easily imagine Elizabeth in full makeup, bearing her avant-garde bouquet. Not every bride could carry off this kind of look, but she was going to be dynamite.

Her sister was more of a fizzling fuse. Patty was a single
nurse who worked at the VA hospital, and she looked like the first draft for Elizabeth. You could tell they were siblings, but Patty’s features were coarser, her long unkempt hair a dull brown to Elizabeth’s cropped and glossy chestnut, her figure stocky rather than strong.

I suspected that Patty wasn’t thrilled about her kid sister’s successes, financial or romantic. And she certainly wasn’t thrilled about her own rose-colored gown and stole, which did nothing for her skin tone and less than nothing for her figure. She nodded sullenly to me and frowned a little at Lily, who had relaxed into a wing chair to enjoy the show.

“Come on through, girls,” Stephanie burbled. “Let’s line you all up.”

Corinne came next. Elizabeth was right, she had put on a few pounds. Instead of draping fluidly the satin pulled in taut creases across her stomach and hips. But you hardly noticed, because the rosy shade was so exactly right for Corinne’s porcelain skin. The pink set off her golden hair and pale blue eyes to fairy-princess perfection, while the plunging neckline would command the attention of every prince in the neighborhood.