'Til Death Do Us Part (25 page)

“One of her jobs was to keep track of the master calendar—it’s on a big board on the wall and also in the computer. Once we sign a contract for a party, the secretary fills in all the information on the calendar. But she messed up three times—once in October and then twice around the holidays. The first two times, the dates of the parties on the master calendar were later in the month than the dates on the contract. I told Mary to boot her stupid fanny out of there as fast as she could. After the second incident, we checked all the parties and weddings listed on the board against their individual contracts to make sure she hadn’t made any other mistakes. The reason we didn’t catch the third fuck-up is that she hadn’t even filled it in on the calendar. We were stupid not to have dragged out every contract and double-checked them all.”

“But aren’t there conversations with clients during the days right before the party—in which you’d all of a sudden realize you had your signals crossed?”

“In some cases, yes. I mean, that certainly happens with a new client. You book the party, and then, as you get closer to the date, you start to review the plans together. Some of the women in this town have to go over every detail ad infinitum. What would you expect, considering they have nothing better to do with their days than eat lunches of nothing but lettuce leaves with their girlfriends and have their hair blown out? But with clients who’ve used us a million times, they might just call, book a date, and then leave it all to us. They get the contract and confirmation letter and we might not hear from them again. The week before the party, we call to touch base with them, but neither the client nor the person from my office might ever say ‘this Thursday’—or ‘next Friday.’ In slower months I might actually even remember when a party is, but around the holidays, no way. This year we had at least two parties booked for every night.”

“So in each of the three cases, it was an established client you’d done parties for in the past?”

“That’s right,” she said, weighing what I’d just asked. “Which means in each case we’d have had very little reason to talk to them prior to the event. So do you think that little brat did it on purpose?”

“Well, three times just seems like a lot. Unless she was incredibly sloppy or lazy or suffered from dyslexia. You knew the girl. What did she seem like?”

“Kind of naive. Do you think someone
paid
her to sabotage me?”

“That’s an interesting question. Do you know where she is now?”

“I haven’t a clue. Maybe Mary knows.”

“There’s just one more thing I’m curious about,” I said. “What time did you leave the farm last night?”

“About six. Why?”

“Was Phillipa around?”

“No, she left earlier. She said she had a doctor’s appointment. I’ve never met anyone who sees the doctor as much as she does.”

She began ranting about Phillipa’s hypochondria, about how she once had to be on crutches for two weeks because of a plantar wart, but I was only half listening. If Phillipa was the one who was after me, she could have slipped out when she saw me leaving the farm and followed me to Wellington House, parking along the road someplace until I came out.

I took two more swigs of coffee, excused myself, and ran back upstairs. Using the landline on the bedside table, I phoned the police. Needless to say, the cops I’d dealt with weren’t still on duty, and it took me forever to hook up with someone who knew my situation. Finally someone came back on to report that investigators had already been out to the Crawfords’ this morning. I was free to retrieve my car.

“Wow, that was fast,” I said.

“They wanted to take a look at things before the sun had a chance to alter the conditions.”

I asked to be transferred to Detective Pichowski’s line. A woman informed me that he was expected in about half an hour. I asked for directions and left a message saying that I’d be stopping in later. Next I called the Crawfords. Evelyn answered and explained that though Richard had left for work, she would be there all morning. And she had good news. The police had shoveled out the area around the front of my bumper and moved the Jeep into the driveway. There was no need for a tow truck after all. And no need to do serious damage to my MasterCard.

As I hurried downstairs, my feet making no sound on the thick carpet, I discovered David thrusting his arms into his overcoat.

“Is the caretaker on-site?” I asked. “Believe it or not, my Jeep is ready to be picked up.”

“Why don’t I drop you, then?” he said. “I’m headed that way now.”

Without waiting for household servant assistance, I found my coat and hat in the front hall closet, as well as my boots, which someone must have administered to last night because the insides were now bone-dry. While David retrieved some papers from the library, I ducked into the kitchen to say good-bye to Peyton, who was in the midst of lecturing a young woman on the distinction between firm and runny. She stopped long enough for me to say good-bye. She said she’d be heading over to the farm in a few hours, and we agreed to talk soon.

Inside David’s Jaguar it was toasty warm, so someone obviously had started the engine earlier in the morning. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to get used to all the little privileges of the very rich.

We drove slowly through the front gate, and as we came to a halt at the end of the driveway, I looked up and down the road in both directions. A bright red sports car shot by, but that was the only vehicle on the road. David asked for the Crawfords’ number on Rolling Ridge, and we turned in that direction. Twice within the first minute out of the driveway, I saw him check his rearview mirror.

“You must be feeling very anxious,” he said. Still wearing his buttery brown leather gloves, he handled the steering wheel agilely.

“Yeah, I am. But I think I’ll feel better when I speak to the police. They apparently examined the scene early this morning.”

“Do you really believe they’ll find any evidence?”

“Not much, perhaps,” I said. “But because of what happened last night, I think they’ll finally start taking this seriously. Speaking of which, there’s something I wanted to ask you. I spoke to Phillipa yesterday and she shared something that I hadn’t heard before. She said that Mandy was very upset that Lilly couldn’t be in the wedding.”

He snorted, as if he’d heard it one too many times.

“I’m aware of that, of course. But we smoothed out everything over nine months ago. Lilly got to wear a dress that cost about a thousand dollars more than the bridesmaid dresses, and she was perfectly happy.”

“She left the reception early—she had Mandy pick her up.”

“It was all a bit overwhelming for her—which was to be expected. What are you suggesting, anyway?”

“Are you sure there’s no chance Mandy could be responsible for all of this?”

We’d just hit a bend in the road, and as soon as he’d maneuvered the car around it, he turned his head toward me, brows furrowed.

“That sounds like a theory
Peyton
might be floating.”

“Actually—I think that’s the Crawfords’ driveway up on the right—it interests me, too.”

“Like I told you the other night, I just can’t imagine Mandy murdering someone over this. She wasn’t happy about the divorce, but she got over it. The last I heard, she was dating some guy ten years younger than her. What do they call that at that magazine you work for—a stud muffin?”

“I guess. I write the crime stories. I don’t run into many studs in my line of work, and if I do they’re often psychopaths.”

As Evelyn had reported, my Jeep was no longer in the road, but as we approached the Crawford driveway I could see the impression of the front fender in the snowbank, as well as the pockmarks from where I—and someone else—had climbed over it. David pulled the Jaguar into the driveway, and as he did I turned around just to make doubly sure no one was following us.

“You’re okay with me just leaving you here?” he asked, coming to a stop. “I mean, do you trust these people?”

“Yes, they were very good to me. The worst that could happen is that they’d try to convince me to become a Republican.”

As I reached for the car door, he laid his hand on my arm.

“Peyton has always said you’re quite the girl,” he remarked, his voice warm but at the same time full of authority. “And I know you want to get to the bottom of all of this. But don’t be foolish, Bailey. You had a close call last night, and you need to stop the amateur investigator stuff.”

“I
will
stay out of it if the police finally decide to get involved. But what was I supposed to do up until now—be a sitting duck? Like Ashley?”

He considered my words, silent for a moment, then reached under his coat and slid a wallet from his pants pocket. He opened it and withdrew a business card.

“Why don’t you call and let me know how it goes with the police today?” he said, handing it to me.

He waited until Mrs. Crawford had let me inside. I stayed only long enough to fight off an offer for tea and to thank her again for all her help. Once I was alone outside, I quickly checked both ends of the Jeep. It was dinged up in the front and slightly worse in the back, but nothing I couldn’t live with for now.

The minute I turned out onto the road, I began to feel scared out of my wits again. I checked the rearview mirror every other second, and even though my Jeep had yet to warm up, my hands were sweating on the steering wheel.

As soon as I reached town, my anxiety began to recede. It was broad daylight, traffic was brisk, and I’d soon be at police headquarters.

The station was in an old limestone building on a side street not far from Greenwich Avenue. I waited in an unfurnished vestibule as a desk cop behind a thick glass window listened to a haughty middle-aged man complain about kids on snowmobiles in the woods behind his house. When I was finally able to ask for Pichowski, I was told he was actually in another building just around the corner. I walked down a short street called Police Alley to a nondescript two-story building, where the detective squad occupied the second floor.

I gave my name to a receptionist behind a window and waited in the corridor for ten minutes. A secretary came out and told me it would be a few more minutes. Ten minutes later she finally returned and asked me to follow her. I was overdue for a cup of coffee, and I felt my energy flagging.

Pichowski sat in the middle of the room at the last metal desk in a row of six, which butted up to six identical ones, face-to-face. About half were occupied with other detectives, making phone calls or skimming reports, the remains of their breakfasts still in paper wrapping on their desks. Pichowksi rose and greeted me. He was wearing the same suit jacket he’d had on last week and a wide orange-and-green tie that suggested he’d given in to a bad-tie urge. Several crumbs nestled in his brown mustache—as if he’d hurriedly finished a doughnut when he’d heard I was waiting outside.

“Good morning, Ms. Weggins,” he said, rising to shake hands with me. “Here, please sit down.”

He pointed to a gray folding chair next to his desk. As he settled back in his own seat, one of those big ergonomically correct chairs, I did as he said, slipping off my coat and letting it fall behind me. The room was overheated, and though someone had cracked a window, it was having about as much impact as trying to let a breeze into hell.

“When we met last week, I thought you said you were just out here for the day,” he said. “Do you spend quite a bit of time here?” He had one of those fake curious looks on his face, the kind people have when they ask a question they already know the answer to.

“No, not generally,” I said. “But after Ashley’s death I was very concerned. I came back out again to talk to some people—and to spend time with Peyton Cross.”

“To talk to people?”

“Yes. To be honest, I was very alarmed by everything that had happened. I wanted to see if I could find some answers.”

He tossed that around for a second in his mind, started to say one thing, then appeared to switch gears.

“So tell me about last night,” he said. “The patrol cops filled me in, of course, and we had some people out there this morning to look at the scene. But I’d like to hear it all from you.”

I let out a sigh without meaning to. I just felt so relieved to finally have the chance to talk to someone who could
do
something about it. I went through the whole story, sharing my suspicion that I was probably followed from the time I left the farm. All around us detectives and a few support staff types bustled about, looking busy, though I suspected a few might be eavesdropping. When I finally finished my story, I leaned back in my chair and looked at Pichowski expectantly. He pursed his lips together, obviously mulling over my tale.