Died to Match (34 page)
Authors: DEBORAH DONNELLY
E-mail first, in case there was a message from the prominent young heiress who had actually responded to the Made in Heaven web site. Thank you, Zack, wherever you are. I had sent her a proposal for her wedding, along with an invitation to come in for a first consultation, and was eagerly awaiting her reply. And I got one, too, but not the reply I wanted. In my one Unread Message, she thanked me for my time, and said that she’d decided to use Dorothy Fenner instead.
“I thought Dorothy was leaving town!” I called Joe Solveto to whine, after gritting my teeth and sending the heiress a gracious reply. That’s the nice thing about E-mail, you don’t have to fake your tone of voice. “Why isn’t she in Arizona where she belongs?”
Joe chuckled. “The word is that Dominatrix Dorothy packed her husband off to Scottsdale alone, and took an apartment near her office. She says he can come back to visit her, but only by invitation.”
“Just what I needed,” I grumbled. “Bad publicity, and Dorothy still on the scene.”
“There is no such thing as bad publicity,” he told me sternly. “You wait, brides will call you just to get the juicy details
about Corinne Campbell. Now go enjoy your turkey. Give my love to the luscious Lily.”
Aaron arrived almost half an hour late, and seemed preoccupied, so I decided to save the unveiling of my secret plan for the end of the evening. He apologized, then frowned as I climbed into his car and settled the pie on my lap. “Is pie supposed to look like that?”
“Of course it is. Listen, Aaron, Lily might have a friend there tonight, a man.”
“Besides me?” he asked as he drove. “You know how I hate to co-star.”
“Be serious. I mean, she’s dating someone, and I haven’t met him yet, so behave yourself, OK?”
“When do I not?” He glanced over at me. His shiner had faded to a repulsive yellowy-green. “Of course I will, Slim. I’m very fond of Lily.”
It only occurred to me to wonder, as we entered her modest, happily messy house, if Aaron would be fond of Lily’s sons, and vice versa. But he immediately began to wrestle with them, causing shrieks of delighted terror to bounce off the walls. Lily ignored them, and beckoned me into the kitchen.
“Let them wear themselves out before dinner,” she said, pouring me a glass of wine. “How are you?”
“Never mind how I am, what about this new guy of yours? Are you going to tell me more about him before he gets here?”
She smiled mischievously. “You’ll have to wait… no, you won’t, he’s here.”
Marcus and Ethan had begun to shriek, “Mike! Mike!” so I stepped to the doorway—and saw Detective Lieutenant Michael Graham, a bottle of wine in one hand and a bouquet
of white roses in the other, with both boys wrapped around his legs like curly-haired little octopuses.
“Hello,” he said, as Aaron and I gaped silently. “Carnegie, was it Pinot Noir you liked so much? That’s what I brought.”
Lily pecked him on the cheek and relieved him of the wine and the flowers. I shot her a look that said, You only met him two weeks ago! and she shot one right back saying, So what? Then she laughed, and Aaron pumped Mike’s hand, and we settled down to dinner.
The feast was wonderful—Lily did her famous Madeira gravy—and the walk around Green Lake was bracing, with the boys putting in double the mileage of the grown-ups with all their running around. On our return, my unfortunate pie was consumed with only a few witty comments about its interesting texture. The high-spirited atmosphere and the obvious chemistry between Lily and her new man—and maybe the Pinot Noir, too—got me counting the minutes before Aaron and I could decently leave and head back to my place.
Aaron seemed to be sharing my thoughts, sitting ever closer to me on the couch, and slipping a warm, massaging hand between my shoulder blades. I began to speculate about the location of his tattoo, and to lose the thread of the conversation.
But then the boys were carried off to bed, and the conversation turned, inevitably, to Corinne Campbell.
“It’s the saddest kind of case,” Graham said, leaning back in his chair with his hands wrapped around a coffee mug. “She might never have resorted to murder if Peters hadn’t pushed Mercedes Montoya into the water. The way I figure it, Campbell killed her rival in a fury, got blood all over her white Venus costume, and then jumped into the harbor to
cover it up. She couldn’t very well go back to the party looking like that.”
“Her nails,” I murmured.
“What?” asked Lily.
I told her, as I had already told the police, about Corinne’s long fake nails, the ones that were gone when she was “rescued” from the harbor. “She must have had blood under her nails, too, and pulled them off in the water. But first she threw in the diamond ring that Roger had promised her, still on the chain that she took from Mercedes’ neck.”
The diamond that Roger Talbot wanted back as a memento, I thought, and Rick Royko wanted as payment on a drug deal, is permanently sunk in the black ooze at the bottom of Elliott Bay. Diamonds are forever.
Graham—I’d have to start calling him Mike—nodded and went on. “Campbell didn’t find out until the funeral that Angela Sims saw her getting rid of the ring. She might have won a jury’s sympathy about the first murder. The wronged woman, a moment of madness, that kind of thing. But killing Sims was almost certainly premeditated, and of course she shot Thomas Barry in cold blood. No one’s going to execute a pregnant woman, though. She’ll have the baby in prison.”
The thought was so depressing that I couldn’t speak. Lily bit her lip and made a soft, distressed sound.
“Corinne must have thought about abortion, earlier on,” she said sadly. “But being Catholic, and being in love with Roger Talbot, that would have been a horrible prospect. And then after committing murder, the deadliest sin, she just lost her grip altogether.”
Aaron seemed not to hear her. He was still putting the factual pieces together. “She killed Mercedes, and then claimed
that someone tried to kill her. She killed Angela, and made up that story about being chased by Lester Foy Corinne was always the victim, always crying wolf. We just couldn’t see that she was the wolf.”
A silence fell. I tried to use Aaron’s perspective, to think about the puzzle and not the heartbreak.
“OK, Mike, two questions.” I held up my cup as Lily poured more coffee. “If Lester Foy wasn’t Dracula, then who was? And what was Foy doing at the cemetery in Redmond, if he wasn’t stalking us?”
“The first one’s easy,” said the detective, flushing a little, “though if you tell anyone I’ll deny it.”
We all leaned forward a little, and he rolled his eyes. “Dracula was a guy named—well, never mind his name. He’s a hotshot DEA agent from the party-drug task force. He’d been tracking Rick the Rocket, and he wanted to try some close-up surveillance. Without telling us, of course. The goddamn Feds are always pulling stunts like that. Excuse my French.”
Amid our exclamations, he continued, “But Lester Foy showing up at the cemetery is a mystery to me. He must have been following one of you for some reason, but I don’t see why.”
“I do!” Lily laughed her big, full-throated laugh. “I mean, I can guess why he was there, but he wasn’t following anybody. Carnegie, didn’t you say Foy was with his girlfriend, and that she’s a guitarist?”
I nodded. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“You were at Greenwood Cemetery in Redmond, right?” The phone started ringing, and as she stood up to answer it she said, “Girl, Greenwood Cemetery is where Jimi Hendrix is
buried! Music people go there all the time. Excuse me a minute.”
“Librarians are such show-offs,” said Aaron, in mock indignation. “How did she know—”
“Aaron, it’s for you,” said Lily from the kitchen door. “Long distance, I think.”
He grimaced and shut his eyes, as if something expected and yet dreaded had happened. “Sorry. My cell phone’s on the blink, so I left your number with someone just in case.”
Two minutes later, he returned from the kitchen with an odd, tight look on his face. “Well, it’s getting late. Stretch, do you mind if we take off now?”
“No problem,” I said. Enough with the postmortem, let’s go home and start the carpe diem. But when I followed him into Lily’s bedroom to fetch our coats, and tried to steal a quick kiss, he kept his distance. I touched his shoulder. “Aaron, what is it? Something wrong with your family in Boston?”
“Yeah,” he said, shrugging into his coat. “Well, no, not exactly. But I do have to fly back there right away. There’s someone I have to help out.”
“Who?”
Aaron jammed his hands into his pockets and sighed. I was just thinking about how handsome he was, even with a black eye, when he said, “My wife.”
D
EBORAH
D
ONNELLY
’s inspiration for the Carnegie Kincaid series came when she was planning her best friend’s wedding and her own at the same time. (Both turned out beautifully.) A long-time resident of Seattle, Donnelly now lives in Boise, Idaho, with her writer husband and their two Welsh corgis. Readers can visit her at
www.deborahdonnelly.org
.
If you couldn’t wait to turn each page of you’ll be on the edge of your seat with the next wedding planner mystery by
Deborah Donnelly, on sale Fall 2003
Read on for a preview…
I don’t do bachelor parties.
Wait, that sounds like I jump naked out of cakes. And who makes cakes that tall and skinny? What I mean is, I don’t plan bachelor parties. Weddings, yes. Rehearsal dinners, of course. Bridesmaids’ luncheons, engagement parties, even the occasional charity gala, when business is slow.
The business in question is “Made in Heaven, Elegant Weddings With An Original Flair, Carnegie Kincaid, Proprietor.” I’ve got a pretty decent clientele in Seattle by now, and sometimes I get non-nuptial referrals. But I don’t do bachelor parties.
First off, I resent the symbolism of the doomed groom enjoying one last spasm of freedom before turning himself in to the matrimonial slammer. I’m in favor of matrimony, after all. I might even try it myself—but that’s another story.
The second and more compelling reason is that no event planner in her right mind wants to plan an event where the guests are hell-bent on drinking themselves to oblivion and behaving as poorly as possible en route.
So why, at ten o’clock on a frigid December evening, was I en route to the Hot Spot Café, inside of which were at least two dozen inebriated bachelors? Because of Sally “The Bride From Hell” Tyler.
Now, most brides are content to let the best man coordinate the bachelor bash. Not Sally Tyler, oohh no. Sally was a mere slip of a girl, with milky skin and smooth white-blonde hair, but she had cold agate eyes beneath dark, level brows. When she was displeased—a seemingly daily occurrence—her eyebrows
drew together and her furious glare pierced your vital organs like a stiletto carved from ice.
I desperately needed the revenue from the Tyler/Sanjek account, but it was turning out to be hard-earned. My innards were practically perforated.
Sally’s latest excuse for a temper tantrum was this bachelor party. Supposedly, she asked me to plan the affair so that my valuable services, along with the food and drink, could be her wedding gift to Frank Sanjek, her devoted (not to say besotted) fiancé. But I saw through that little fiction.
What Sally really craved was more scope to contradict, criticize, and in general control Frank’s every waking moment. Though why she thought my involvement would prevent the best man from pouring too much booze, or screening porno movies, or doing anything else he pleased, was beyond me. I’m a wedding planner, not a chaperone.
Anyway, I declined, Sally fumed, and then Frank’s best man, Jason Croy came up with a perfect site for the party. A friend of his owned a café on the Seattle Ship Canal, complete with bar and pool table, and the place was closing for a major remodel. The guys could take it over for the night for free. They could do their worst, with Jason as master of ceremonies—but only if the event was held immediately, well in advance of the wedding date.
So, like a good best man, Jason set up the bachelor party venue, the guest list, and the entertainment. Meanwhile I made peace with Sally by arranging for a buffet of serve-yourself Greek appetizers catered by my friend and colleague Joe Solveto, while stipulating that I personally would not be visiting the party permises. Frank thanked his bride for her generous gift, and everybody was happy.
Until ten minutes ago. I’d been working late, digging through some files over at Joe’s office in the Fremont neighborhood, when my cell phone rang.
“Carnegie, it’s Sally. You have to go to the Hot Spot right away. Jason needs you.”
“Why can’t he just call me? What’s wrong?” My stomach constricted at the sudden vision of all the things that might be wrong: property damage, an angry neighbor, an injured guest…
“Just go, OK? You’re, like, two minutes away from there, aren’t you?”
“Not exactly, but—” But if someone was hurt, or the police had been summoned, every minute would count. “I’ll be there as quick as I can.”
So I climbed into Vanna White Too, the new replacement for my dear departed white van, and drove through the Christmas lights and sights to the south side of the canal.
December in Seattle is usually gray and drippy, but this evening had a winter wonderland feel, with Christmas trees and decorations all a-glitter in the clear, crisp air. The “Artists’ Republic of Fremont” has gone almost mainstream these days, now that a big software firm calls it home and the fancy condos have sprung up, but there are still plenty of funky shops and charming restaurants.
Everywhere I looked tonight, white puffs of frozen breath rose above the Yuletide shoppers and diners as they hurried cheerfully along the sidewalks. Too bad I wasn’t one of them. I crossed the Fremont drawbridge to the darker, quieter blocks along Nickerson, then dropped down a side street.
The new Vanna rode like a Rolls after the clanking and stalling of the old one, and we pulled up smoothly to the undistinguished brick facade of the Hot Spot Café. At least there were no police cars in sight, and no ambulance.
The front entrance was locked, so I hammered on it, and tried to peer through the gaps in the curtained front windows; no telling if anyone could hear me over the guitar music throbbing inside. After one last pound, I gave up and went around back, hugging myself against the cold.
I’m not used to real winter weather. I still had on my most businesslike suit from a morning meeting, but the temperature had been plummeting all day, and the silk tweed blazer, though stylish, was no match for it. So now I was shivering as well as irritated and anxious.
Out back, a wooden dining deck extended over a wedge of patchy grass and shadowy bushes that sloped down to an empty bike path and the wide, cement-walled lane of dark, still water. The Seattle Ship Canal is a major waterway; on sunny afternoons, the Hot Spot’s patrons could sit out on there with
their beers and watch big sailboats and bigger barges move between Puget Sound to the west and Lake Union to the east.
Right now, though, the splintered planks of the deck held nothing but stacked plastic chairs and a silver coating of frost that sparkled in the light from the bare windows and sliding glass doors. The glass doors were unlocked, so I stepped gratefully inside.
A quick look around yielded a confused impression of milling young men, clouds of cigar smoke, puddles of spilled liquor, and a massive serve-yourself Greek mess. Empty plates and glasses littered all the tables, but the mess went far beyond that.
From the demolished dolmathes scattered across the pool table, to the bits of fried calamari stuck to the ceiling, to the smear of spanakopita on the big-screen TV, Joe’s feast had clearly been enjoyed in ways he never intended. There was a bit of broken glass—apparently juggling retsina bottles is now a recognized indoor sport—but no broken heads that I could see, no blood, and no cops.
And no Jason Croy Peering through the fumes, I spotted Frank Sanjek sitting stupefied near the television, on which two women with improbable physiques were cavorting in a hot tub. Though I couldn’t fathom his devotion to Sally, Frank was a sensible fellow, with a cleft in his square chin and an amiable look in his light blue eyes. So far he’d been quite pleasant to work with.
Averting my gaze from the hot tub hotties, I headed toward Frank to ask for an explanation. But my path was blocked by three men, all of them in their early twenties and none of them sober.
“Hey, she’s here!” shouted one, a beefy lad whose sweatshirt was adorned with something damp and garlicky. At least it smelled less disgusting than it looked. He was swaying a bit on his feet, and gazing at me with the oddest mixture of shyness and enthusiasm. He dropped a moist, heavy hand on my shoulder and repeated, “She’s finally here.”
“Yes, I’m here,” I snapped, trying for patience and failing.
Someone turned off the music, and in the heavy-breathing silence I removed his hand. “Brilliant observation. Now where’s Jason?”
“How come you’re wearing, like, a suit?” inquired one of his companions, a sharp-faced sort leaning on a cue stick.
“How come she’s so flat?” muttered the third, and there were nervous snickers all around.
This drunken discourtesy left me speechless for a moment, and while I gathered my wits to tell him off, some of the other men, the ones who were still ambulatory, began to congregate around us. Not quite a wolf pack—the eyes were too dull, the movements too clumsy. More like a herd of cows. But still…
“It ain’t whatcha got, it’s whatcha do with it!” yelled someone from the back. “Do it!”
Catcalls and more lewd comments followed. Make that a herd of bulls. A sort of testosterone bellowing arose, and emergency or not, I decided to bail out. I didn’t have to put up with this. Then a new voice, familiar this time, cut across the others.
“Shut up, you jerks! Carnegie, what are you doing here?”
The speaker was a young black man, even taller than me and nearly as lanky, but with rock-solid biceps gleaming darkly against his sleeveless white T-shirt. He had large, ardent eyes, and a humorous curl to his wide mouth that I knew very well—from all the time I spent hanging out with his sister.
Darwin James was the younger brother of my best friend, Lily, and a coworker of Frank Sanjek’s at the headquarters of Meet for Coffee. The MFC chain of espresso shops had been giving Starbucks a run for their money. Frank was a brand manager, and Darwin, formerly an underground comics artist, was now a hip, much-in-demand graphic designer. He was also one of Frank’s groomsmen.
“What’s going on here?” I asked him. “I had an urgent call to come talk to Jason. Is someone hurt?”
“Not that I know of.” Darwin shrugged and gestured around the room with the bottle of orange juice he held in one long, muscular hand. “I think Jason’s playing pool. You want me to get him?”
“Please.” The herd was dispersing, though Mr. Garlic stood his ground. I stepped away from him and added, “Why’s everyone staring?”
“Mistaken identity,” said a light, mocking voice.
From the pool room beyond the bar, the best man sauntered
towards us through the debris-laden tables. Jason Croy’s face was long and lantern-jawed, with full, crisply carved lips and small gray eyes, just a touch too close together. His eyes held disdainful amusement, as they often did, and a spark of malice.
Or is that my imagination? I wondered. I didn’t like Jason Croy
“So Carnegie,” he continued, “we need some more booze around here. Some of these gentlemen brought their friends. Make it a mixed case, OK? And another rack of beer.”
“What?!” Curiosity about his first remark vanished in indignation about his second. “You called me over here to make a liquor run?”
The full lips stretched into a slow, arrogant smile. He, too, was weaving a little on his feet. “Well, you’re in charge of the food and drink, aren’t you? That’s what Sally said.”
“If Sally had told me this on the phone—” But of course, that’s why she hadn’t told me what Jason needed so urgently. Because I wouldn’t have come.
“Come on,” Jason wheedled, “you’ve got your car out anyway, why not do us a favor? All my plastic is maxed out.”
“Listen up, Jason,” I said, and I could feel my face getting hot. “If you want more liquor, you can get your ass to a Seven-Eleven. I’m off duty.”
My exit would have been more dignified if I hadn’t stumbled on a shish kabob, but I kicked it aside and strode over to the glass door. It slid open as I got there, and in walked, no kidding, Santa Claus.
I was still puzzled—Salvation Army on overtime? A late guest with a sense of humor?—when a howl went up from the men.
“That’s her!”
“She’s here!”
“Merry freakin’ Christmas!”
St. Nick glared at me and said, in a low but distinctly female tone, “Hey, I work alone.”
I took a closer look, past the rippling white beard and padded red suit, and realized that this particular Santa Claus was wearing glossy scarlet lipstick, extravagant false eyelashes, and high-heeled black boots.
Enter stripper, exit Carnegie. I spotted three other, legitimate Santas on my drive back to Joe’s office, and I snarled at every one of them.
I don’t usually work in Fremont. Under normal circumstances, I live in a houseboat on the east shore of Lake Union, with the Made in Heaven offices located conveniently upstairs. At the moment, and hugely inconveniently, I was working at Joe’s catering office and sleeping on Lily’s fold-out couch.
The culprit was that ancient enemy of damp wood, Serpiaa lacrymans. Dry rot. My houseboat was infested with the fungal friend, and my horrified landlady had launched a barrage of chemical and mechanical assaults to annihilate it.
Mrs. Castle barely gave me time to load up my PC and some file boxes, and stuff my suitcase, before she had the place cordoned off and swarming with guys in hazmat suits. At least I was saving some rent, which had gone to the down payment on Vanna Too.
So tonight, the award for My Least Favorite Entity on Earth was a split decision between Serpiaa lacrymans and Jason Croy His outrageous demand for delivery service had interrupted a frantic search: I was trying to unearth a particularly nice photograph of one of my brides to show at a television appearance in the morning. I’d never been on TV before, so naturally I was nervous.
Not that I expected an interrogation or anything; this was just a segment about weddings on a local morning show, with a perky interviewer and some softball questions about my job. But my fellow guest would be Beau Paliere, a very hot wedding designer from Paris by way of Hollywood, who’d arrived in Seattle to keynote a bridal expo.
Beautiful Beau—as the celebrity magazines called him—was very big time, and I didn’t want to look like a yokel in contrast. Besides, this could be terrific publicity for Made in Heaven—if I carried it off well.
All that anxiety has to channel itself somewhere, so earlier this evening I had become suddenly and unreasonably convinced that my on-screen success hinged on having the camera pan across this one damn photo. I’d riffled through each of my files
at least twice, and now the minutes were counting down to zero hour. I had to be awake, dressed and mascara’d by five a.m.