Died to Match (13 page)

“That’s because she’s upset—” I began, but Lily cut me off.

“Lieutenant Graham, listen to me,” she said, with that imperious Cleopatra look she can summon at will. “Someone stupid and desperate enough for a daylight robbery could easily be stupid and desperate enough for murder. And even if he does live on Capitol Hill, it’s still quite a coincidence that Skull was watching the dress shop like that. And besides—”

“Besides,” I jumped in, “the boy who cried wolf was devoured by one. What if Corinne is telling the truth, Lieutenant? She may be a flake, but how are you going to feel if she’s murdered, too?”

“Ms. Kincaid,” he said, “things happen every day in this city that I feel just terrible about.”

Suddenly I understood Graham’s air of disappointment. It came from constantly being appalled at the sins of mankind, and constantly watching them committed all over again.

“So you won’t pursue this.”

“I didn’t say that.” He stood up, wrapped the rest of his sandwich in a napkin, and dropped a bill on the table. “I’ll see if I can find out what your friend Skull was up to on Saturday night, and I’ll talk to Ms. Campbell again. And then if you don’t mind, I’ll continue to do my job and investigate why one of your party guests killed Mercedes Montoya. Now, I’m late for my briefing. Thanks for your input. Nice meeting you, Lily.”

We finished our lunch in discouraged silence, and then Lily had to go to work.

“Thanks again for carting me around today.”

“No problem.” She chuckled. “It was worth it to see you all dolled up like that.”

“And thanks for sticking up for me with Graham. You made my case better than I did, even if it is a pretty feeble case. I’ll take care of the check.”

She left, and I sat folding sugar packets into origami and thinking about Corinne. I knew she wasn’t just telling a theatrical fib, I could feel it. Professional victims, to use Aaron’s phrase, feed on the attention and concern that they create with their histrionics. They revel in victimhood. Corinne was trying to go on with her day-to-day life, doing her interviews and writing up her columns, but she was hardly reveling. She was badly shaken, I could see it in her eyes.

The question was, now that I’d alerted the police, what else could I do? Elizabeth and her attendants were already on the alert; no point spooking them further by telling them my theory, which was probably wrong anyway. These were sensible women, after all. They weren’t about to go strolling down dark alleys with a guy who looked like Skull.

“Hey, Kincaid. My shift is over. What’s up?”

Standing before me was a spherical young woman wearing tiny cat’s-eye glasses with huge rhinestone frames. Her hair was dyed chartreuse and shaved into a checkerboard pattern like clear cuts in a national forest, and when she spoke, you could see the steel stud through the end of her tongue.

“Hey, yourself,” I said. “How’d you like to bake a wedding cake for me?”

J
UICE NUGENT WAS EVEN MORE INTERESTING THAN SHE
looked—and considering her outfit today, that was saying something. I was only five or six years her senior, but my linen trousers and tweed jacket came from a different planet than her ebony leather bustier and heavy denim jacket, and the startling stretch of plump, milk-white leg between the raveled edges of her very short shorts and the scalloped tops of her purple snakeskin boots. The jacket’s shoulder seams were stitched with dozens of earrings, fishing lures and other trinkets that quivered and jangled at her slightest move, and a button on the lapel read “Queer and Proud. Any Questions?”

“You bet your ass I want to bake a wedding cake for you!” she said. Juice had a raspy voice with a lot of mileage on it. “I’ve only been telling you so for months. Wait, I’ll get us some coffee.”

As a teenage runaway, Juice had lived on the streets of Seattle for almost a year before hooking up with FareStart, a program that trains homeless people for food service jobs. They discovered her genius for baking, and she discovered self-respect. Now Juice was the diva of Danish and the goddess of galettes, and more than that, flat-out obsessed with becoming a sought-after wedding-cake designer. Her bosses
at BBA, a middle-aged lesbian couple, loaned Juice cooler and oven space for freelance cake projects. She made a mocha mousse filling to die for, and did remarkably elegant work with tricky material like poured fondant.

The trouble was, Juice scared the clients. Green hair and blue language worked fine at a counterculture place like BBA, but not with your typical mother of the bride.

“So who’s the lucky girl?” she demanded, returning with a refill for me and a cup for herself.

“Her name’s Bonnie Buckmeister, and it’s a very Christmassy wedding. She and her folks have looked at several designs, but so far nothing seems quite right.”

She snickered. “So it’s last-resort time, huh?”

“Juice, I’ve told you before, your cakes are fabulous, but cakes aren’t everything. People need to be comfortable with you.”

“And I’ve told you, Kincaid, people are gonna get comfortable with me once my reputation takes off. I just need to prove myself.”

“Well, here’s a chance to start. Do you want to take a crack at it?”

“Hell, yeah!” The jacket jingled as she leaned forward, her arrogant expression suddenly earnest. “You’re not going to regret this, you’ll see. I’m gonna be famous. I am going to be the freakin’ Dale Chihuly of cake.”

“I’m sure you will, Juice, but meanwhile could you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“When I bring the Buckmeisters in for a tasting, lose the tongue stud?”

She agreed, reluctantly, and I gave her the rundown on
the Buckmeister/Frost nuptials: number of guests, buffet menu, reception decor, and what I was able to surmise of the Buckmeister aesthetic approach. We made a date for the tasting, and then as we were leaving the table a thought struck me.

“Juice, you live on Capitol Hill, don’t you? Have you ever seen a guy near Olive and Broadway, with tattoos all over his head?”

“On his face, you mean?”

“No, his skull is shaved and tattooed. There’s a big one above his left ear, a bat hovering over an eyeball.”

“Cool! I woulda noticed that if I’d ever seen him. I love tattoos.”

“But you don’t have any yourself.”

She shrugged. “My girlfriend Rita likes my skin the way it is. How come you’re looking for this guy?”

“Oh… I just wanted to talk to him about, um, a band he’s in. For a client party. It’s no big deal, forget it.”

Which was what I needed to do myself. Lieutenant Graham was going to check out Skull’s alibi, and I was going to forget about him and get back to work. But first I bussed up to Westlake and rented a car. My current finances restricted me to a charming little vehicle, lovingly crafted in Eastern Europe, that combined the roomy elegance of a soup can with the horsepower of a sewing machine. Vanna, I vowed, I’ll never complain about you again. All is forgiven, come home soon.

As I stitched my way back to the houseboat, I reflected on the classic entrepreneur’s dilemma facing Made in Heaven: when you’ve got business in hand, you’re too busy to drum up new clients. But when the feast is over, the famine is there waiting. Eddie and I had to do our very best for Elizabeth and Bonnie, but we also had to line up some brides after
them. It was enough to make me nostalgic for a paycheck. Sometimes.

Up in the office, Eddie was covered in smiles and my desk was covered with paper.

“What’s all this?”

“Our new software!” he crowed. “Now that Zack got it to work, we’re going to save all kinds of time and trouble. Look at this. It’s a graph of revenues versus expenses for the last six months.”

I took the sheet he handed me and sat down. “We lost that much in just six months?”

He wasn’t listening. “And this one charts the RSVPs for Lamott/Wheeler, with columns for gifts received, thank-you notes sent, the whole shebang. You check off which columns you want visible on the screen.”

“Hmm. His relatives back East still haven’t answered. I need to give Joe a final head count soon.”

“… and this one is a pie chart of expenses allocated for Buckmeister/Frost. You can edit the captions for each wedge, see?”

“Are the flowers really running that high? Those amaryllis must be made of platinum.”

“Carnegie!” Eddie glowered at me and chomped his cigar so hard it nearly imploded.

“What?”

“Are you interested in this software or not? I’ve been busting my butt at the computer all morning while you went around trying on clothes, and now all you can do is pick nits!”

“Of course I’m interested!” The only treatment for this kind of computer fever was to feign enthusiasm and pray for a quick recovery. “This is just what we need to get a handle on the business. Why don’t you e-mail me some of these, so
I can see them on-screen? Save a little paper, anyway…. Hey, did Zack call?”

“Yeah, he’s coming by tomorrow afternoon. He apologized all up and down about how he acted the other day, but I told him it was only natural seeing how a friend of his just got killed. He’s a nice kid. Smart.”

“According to Paul, he’s a genius with web-site design. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with for Made in Heaven. Anything else going on?”

“Joe Solveto wants to talk to you, so I told him to come on over. And that Talbot fellow called, but he wouldn’t say why. Too bad about his wife. I remember reading about it.”

“Yes. Yes, that really was too bad. I’d better make some calls before Joe gets here.”

I started with Roger Talbot.

“Carnegie, about this rehearsal dinner on Friday,” he said. His voice sounded ghastly.

“Roger, if you’d rather not be there—”

“I promised Paul I’d meet his parents. And I don’t want people to think”—Mercedes’ name hung in the silence between us—“… to think anything. But I just can’t do it. I’m not sleeping, I can’t seem to pull my thoughts together.”

“Don’t worry about it, really,” I said, privately grateful that he wouldn’t be at the Salish. He was hardly the ideal dinner guest at this point. “You can spend some time with Chloe and Howard at the reception.”

“I knew you’d understand. You’re the only one who knows what I’m going through. Thank you, Carnegie.”

First an unwilling confidante to Mercedes, and now a reluctant co-conspirator with Roger. This wasn’t the role I signed up for. Mindful of Eddie’s presence—he claimed he didn’t eavesdrop but I knew he did, and he knew I knew—I
made a brisk and businesslike farewell, and reached for my next phone message slip, from Pete the mechanic. But Eddie couldn’t resist a comment.

“Talbot bailed out, huh?” Before I could come up with an explanation, he provided his own. “Delayed reaction to his wife dying. It happens. Your mother went along fine for a couple of months, keeping up a good front, and then she kinda folded up for a while. Probably the same for Talbot.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Eddie. Excuse me.” I punched in Pete’s number. The news was not good.

“We’re looking at twenty-five, twenty-seven hundred here, Carnegie!” Pete had to shout over the din of engines, tools, and the Christian radio channel that blared eternally in his tiny office next to the garage. “Then there’s that rear right fender. You want that in the estimate, too?”

“How did I know this would be three thousand?” I mused aloud. I might as well just sign over Elizabeth’s check.

“Can’t hear you!” he said.

“Never mind. Estimate the whole thing, including the fender, and fax it over, OK?”

“Okeydoke!”

Then I got on e-mail and reviewed Eddie’s new hobby of chart creation for fun and profit. He was right, the new software would save us some time, and provide a nice professional format for keeping our clients updated on budgets, vendors, and guests. In my previous life—doing public relations work for a bank—I’d been project manager for some fairly major publications and events, but none of them held a candle to the logistical complexities of a large formal wedding like Bonnie’s or Elizabeth’s. For instance, very few executives throw hissy fits about who they’re seated next to at the annual stockholders meeting.

A jaunty rap on the outer office door announced Joe Solveto. He let himself in, along with a gust of saltwater air and the cries of gulls.

“Victory is mine, boys and girls! I hold in my hand the final menu for Lamott/Wheeler, and it is a triumph of the culinary arts.”

“If you do say so yourself?” I smiled. “Good to see you, Joe.”

Joe was always good to see. For one thing, he was a beautiful man, from his cunningly mussed sandy hair, down past his diligently sculpted dancer’s physique, to his impeccably polished, hand-crafted Italian shoes. Joe and his partner, Alan, made a lovely couple. They also made a lot of money. Alan was a media buyer for the biggest ad agency in town, and Joe had built up Seattle’s premiere catering firm. I loved it when my clients could afford Solveto’s; he was a prince to work with, and they always adored his food. I accepted the menu he offered with my mouth already watering.

“Let’s see… spinach salad with feta and golden raisins, the haricots verts you told me about, Penn Cove mussels… ooh, crab cakes with dried cherries and cilantro, topped with chile aioli? That sounds scrumptious.”

“It is scrumptious.” He folded himself elegantly into a visitor chair. “As is the peppercorned New York strip on foccacia with arugula and Parmesan. Oh, and I’ve had an epiphany for the Buckmeister/Frost entrée, the vegetarian one.”

“Tell, tell.”

“Two epiphanies, actually. Number one is a torta di ver-dura, and—”

“What the hell is that?” Eddie wasn’t quite as fond of Joe as I was. Back in his day, on the high seas, men didn’t admit to homosexuality unless they were very good swimmers. But
Joe answered him with perfect courtesy. He had told me once in private that he found Eddie’s attempt to embrace diversity quite touching.

“Torta di verdura is a ‘cake of greens,’ in this case brioche stuffed with spinach and citrus-scented ricotta.”

“Oh,” said Eddie, embracing away. “Well, that sounds pretty good. What’s number two?”

“Baby arugula salad with figs. And polenta rosemary breadsticks to go with. The torta has dairy, the salad’s completely vegan.”