Veil of Night (17 page)

“What made you think she might be using him?” Garvey asked. Normally he stayed in the background and let Eric do the questioning, but Fayre Dennison had a way about her that drew people out. Eric couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, but he could almost forget why he was here, his job overshadowed by the simple act of conversing with her.

Charisma. That was it. Fayre Dennison had charisma, the kind that pulled people to her and then pried them out of their shells. Talking to her felt like being a kid again and opening Christmas presents.

Shit. He was crushing on her like a teenager, and she was the same age as his mom. Today must be his day for meeting attractive older women: first Madelyn Wilde, and now Fayre Dennison. One was very different from the other, but both were people he instinctively liked and wanted to spend more time around—and Jaclyn’s mom hadn’t been trying to charm him at all, she’d been too pissed.

“Gut feeling,” Fayre replied after a brief consideration. “Carrie was a user. She didn’t try to pull anything with me, and she was always sweet with Sean, but I saw how she acted with other people. There wasn’t anything definite, but I always got the feeling she was reminding herself to be nice. If we were at a restaurant, for example. If the least little thing wasn’t exactly how she wanted it, for a second she’d get this incredibly cold, mean expression, then she’d kind of catch herself and she’d put on this smile so sweet it made my teeth hurt.”

“You said there was a prenup?”

“Yes. We worked hard to make certain Sean didn’t grow up a spoiled brat like so many other kids in his position did. He wasn’t given a job, he had to go out and get one on his own, and he’s responsible for his own bills. We’re lucky in that he’s a genuinely nice person. His one fault, if you want to call it a fault, is that he tends to see the good in people.” She gave a small smile that was full of pride. “But he’s smart, and we’re smart, and we took the family money out of the equation. Carrie signed a prenup giving up all rights to any money he inherited. That’s all. Anything he made on his own, we thought that was his decision to make if he included provisions regarding that. He didn’t. And, as I said, Carrie didn’t question any of it, just signed the agreement.”

“Maybe she loved him.”

“Maybe,” said Fayre. “Anything’s possible.” Her tone of voice said she didn’t truly think so, but Carrie was dead so she was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

“Do you know of anyone Carrie wasn’t getting along with, someone she may have argued with and it got out of hand?”

“Carrie argued with everyone—except us, and Sean,” said the senator. He breathed out a sigh. “I admit I was worried about Sean marrying her, but she was always—It was as if he brought out the best in her, if you know what I mean. She was never that way when she was with him.”

“Any particular argument that stands out?”

“Only the one with Taite Boyne,” Fayre said. “They were best friends. Taite was supposed to be the maid of honor in the wedding, but the way I understand it, she and Carrie got into a huge argument and Taite quit the wedding party.” The tone of her voice told them that the maid of honor quitting the wedding party was a disaster on the same level with the church burning down.

That was twice the erstwhile maid of honor had been mentioned. The problem with that was, she obviously wasn’t a gray-haired man, and no one had placed her at the reception hall.

“I think they made up,” the senator put in, then shrugged. “I’m not sure. I heard Sean and Carrie talking about it, and that’s the impression I got.”

“Maybe.” Fayre shrugged, too. “There was so much endless drama attached to the wedding preparations that after a while I stopped listening.” She wouldn’t have had any problems with anything she planned; she’d make the decisions, stick to them, let professionals handle the details, and if there were any problems she’d improvise, all without breaking a sweat.

“I have to ask,” said Eric. “Where were you yesterday, between the hours of three and six p.m.?”

She wasn’t insulted by the question at all. In fact, she gave him an understanding look. “I was here, with the four other members of the Crystalle Ball planning committee, doing what we do best: planning. I believe Sydney Phillips was the last person to leave, at … oh, I think around five-thirty. And of course Nora—Mrs. Franks—was here.”

“I was at work,” added the senator. “I had to stay a little later than usual. I left the office about five-fifteen, arrived home about … what? Six o’clock? A little before that, I think.”

As alibis went, they were solid, providing they checked out. Eric got the names of Mrs. Dennison’s fellow committee members, and the pertinent information from the senator, but they would be so easily verified that lying would have been a waste of time, which left him with nowhere to go on the gray-haired man Jaclyn had seen.

He and Garvey got up, and the senator stood also. “I’ll see you to the door,” he said. As they walked across the marble foyer he asked, “Do you have any idea when Carrie’s body will be released to her parents?”

“Probably tomorrow,” Garvey answered.

The senator nodded, looked thoughtful. “Then the arrangements would be made tomorrow afternoon; Fayre and I will clear time to be with Sean and Carrie’s parents, maybe help them make some of the decisions. Sean is devastated. He’s here, in fact, asleep upstairs. He couldn’t sleep at all last night, but finally he was so tired he couldn’t stay on his feet.” He opened the door, walked outside with them.

That was where he halted, put his hands in his pockets, and looked down.

Something about the way the senator was standing, a look of guilt shadowing his face, brought Eric to a halt, too. Garvey looked around, stopped. The three men stood in a loose circle.

“I have to admit to something I don’t like saying,” the senator said heavily.

Eric waited, studying every flicker of expression the senator gave.

“I wasn’t at work,” he admitted, keeping his voice low.

Without wasting more than a second’s thought, Eric could tell where this was heading. “Do you want to tell us where you really were?”

“With my—Look, I have a girlfriend. I was with her.”

Bingo!
He’d been right. What kind of fucking fool would cheat on a woman like Fayre Dennison? Eric wondered. Oh, right—a fucking fool, that’s what kind. He didn’t say what he was thinking, just said, “We’ll need her name and address, her phone number.”

The senator nodded. “I left work early so I could be with her. She was able to get some free time from her own job, so we took the opportunity to be together.”

“Her name?” Eric prodded.

The senator looked miserable. “I—Never mind, I’m not going to make excuses. It’s Taite Boyne.”

The erstwhile maid of honor, Eric thought. Well, well. Things were getting interesting.

Chapter Seventeen

“YOU UP FOR ANOTHER INTERVIEW?” GARVEY ASKED AS
soon as they were in the car. He was already dialing Taite Boyne’s number.

“Sure.” It was after five o’clock, the hot afternoon sun scorching everything it touched, but police work wasn’t a nine-to-five job. Hell, it wasn’t even eight-to-five. If he was lucky, on any given day it was more like seven-to-six. He cranked the air-conditioning on high.

After a minute Garvey disconnected, unnecessarily said “No answer,” and dialed the other number Senator Dennison had given them. Another minute and he said, “Ms. Boyne, this is Detective Eric Wilder with the Hopewell Police Department.”

“Gee, thanks,” Eric muttered, but, yeah, this was his case and the sarge would let him handle it.

“I’d like to get some information from you regarding Carrie Edwards,” Garvey smoothly continued. “Please call me at …” He paused, thinking, then rattled off Eric’s cell phone number.

The exclusive boutique where Taite Boyne worked as a buyer would already be closed, though he wasn’t sure how much time a buyer would actually spend in the store she bought for. She wasn’t answering her cell phone, and if she was at home she wasn’t answering that phone, either, so it looked as if they were done for the day, unless Ms. Boyne returned the call pretty soon. He didn’t expect that to happen.

Neither did Garvey, because he yawned and said, “My blushing bride will be glad if I make it home at a decent hour tonight.”

“You mean you’ll be glad if you make it home at a decent hour, so your blushing bride won’t cut your nuts off and feed them to you.”

“There’s that,” Garvey agreed, smiling a little as he always did when he mentioned his wife. “Nut stew is a little chewy.” Eric might not envy the sergeant his wife—
God
, no!—but he envied the relationship. He hoped some day he found a woman he was still smiling about when they were years into the marriage, which made him think about Jaclyn, because that relationship had taken a shot to the heart before it could even get off the ground—not that he was thinking marriage or anything like that, God forbid. It was just that he’d really thought they clicked.

“I don’t understand jerk wads like the senator,” he said, because that thought led naturally to the couple they’d just left behind. “How can any man be stupid enough to cheat on a woman like that?”

“I was thinking the same thing. Smart, good-looking, nice, rich—what more could a man want?”

There was no way they could know what went on between two people in private, but on the surface of the thing, Eric thought the senator was a piece of shit. Maybe it had something to do with him being in politics in general, because it seemed as if so many politicians cheated on their spouses, but he’d instantly liked Mrs. Dennison so much that cheating on her threw the senator straight into the realm of cosmically stupid.

When they got back to the Hopewell P.D., they trudged in to check messages and see what reports were in. The bullpen wasn’t exactly humming like a beehive, but it was still busy, and at least half the people in there had something to say about the morning’s coffee incident. Ha ha. Thinking of coffee reminded him of Jaclyn. Eric remembered that he’d promised her he’d have the contents of her briefcase copied for her, and mentally smacked himself on the forehead.

While Garvey went to his desk, Eric called a clerk in Evidence who owed him a favor, and was just thumbing through his messages when Garvey called him over.

“Got something interesting from DMV,” Garvey said. “Guess who owns a silver Mercedes.”

Mercedes
was a big clue. “The senator,” Eric said. “No shit?”

“No shit. This case just got a whole lot stickier.” A rich politician was about as sticky as it could get, and they both knew it.

“And turned our potential number one suspect into our potential number one witness.” Which wasn’t also without problems. Now that they had a direction, they could show Jaclyn photographs of various gray-haired men, with the senator’s included, to see if she could identify him, but that was one of the aforementioned problems. He was a state senator who was running for Congress; his political ads were all over television. She could easily “recognize” him from those ads. Eric wanted to make an arrest, but above and beyond that he didn’t want to make the
wrong
arrest.

Right now they didn’t have enough evidence to get a search warrant of the car, and he’d really, really like to have one. But they didn’t have enough to get a judge to even listen to them, plus the senator had an alibi in his girlfriend. They had a direction, and they’d keep chipping away. Alibis could be rattled. For that matter, if it got out that the senator had a girlfriend, Fayre Dennison might step in and do her own rattling.

“I think you need to talk to Jaclyn Wilde again,” said Garvey. “See if you can get a more detailed description of the man she saw.”

Eric thought of the detailed schedule that had been in her briefcase. For the remainder of this week, at least, he knew exactly where she was going and when she’d get there. Being organized was a wonderful thing.

“I’m on my way,” he said.

As he turned away, Garvey said, “Wilder.”

Eric stopped and looked around, eyebrows raised in question.

“Tomorrow morning, if you think about stopping to get a cup of coffee … don’t.”

There had been times when Madelyn had overseen an event feeling so ill she could barely hold her head up, but if she needed to be there, she’d made the effort. Through headaches, menstrual cramps (those were finally, completely in her past, thank God), and stomach viruses, she’d been there, though with the last she’d always wondered how grateful the bride would be if she came down with the virus during her honeymoon. She’d always done her best to limit direct contact when she’d been sick, but if no one else had been available to take her place, she’d done her job. She felt pretty much the same that night, approaching the rehearsal with a “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” attitude. What choice did she have? Just because Carrie Edwards had gotten herself killed, that didn’t mean time stopped for other brides. Life went on. Premier went on.

She had to steel herself to face the rehearsal tonight, and the wedding tomorrow, with a smiling face. No one wanted an event planner with the face of Doom, but, damn, with the mood she was in, this was going to be tough.

The bride, who was really a sweet young woman, had an almost pathological love of the color pink that had turned the wedding into an explosion of bubblegum. Pink flowers, pink invitations, and
miles
of pink ribbon. There were pink bridesmaids’ dresses, pink candles, and even the groomsmen’s cummerbunds were pink. The wedding cake was strawberry, with pink icing. At least the cake was decorated with white roses instead of pink—someone had pointed out that pink roses would get lost against the pink icing, so the bride had given in on that detail.

Even the rehearsal wasn’t safe. The bride wore a pink dress, and the groom sported a matching tie. Each and every bridesmaid was wearing some shade of the color, though tonight they didn’t match. Their pretty—and colorful—dresses ran the gamut from pastel to hot pink to raspberry. The bride’s mother was wearing a lovely champagne suit, and carrying an oversized bright pink purse. There were big pink flowers on the groom’s mother’s long, flowing skirt.

There was even a touch of pale pink on Peach’s flower-print blouse.

Wearing a sharp teal suit, Madelyn felt like a fish swimming in a sea of pink. It wasn’t just the color of her clothing that set her apart, it was the mounting anger and frustration she didn’t dare let out. She wouldn’t ruin this special event for any of them, not for anything in the world.

If this wasn’t just like Carrie Edwards, she thought resentfully. Why couldn’t the woman have gotten herself murdered on a week when they didn’t have an insane number of weddings to handle? She’d be a cross to bear to the bitter end.

Peach leaned over and whispered to Madelyn, “I think I’m going to puke.”

Madelyn glanced meaningfully at the pink on Peach’s blouse and gave her friend a warning glare, but the glare didn’t last. Her sense of humor recovered a little at Peach’s priceless expression, as she attempted to conceal her horror from the wedding party which, to be honest, wasn’t paying a bit of attention to either of them. They stood well to the side, watching the rehearsal, and no one had heard the whispered comment.

“It was an accident,” Peach whispered, picking surreptitiously at a tiny pink flower on her sleeve. “Unless I had a psychic moment, or something. I mean, I knew the
wedding
was pink, but the rehearsal, too?”

There was some confusion about when the ring-bearer, age five, should go down the aisle. The flower girl, age three, was adamant that she should go first, because she was a “gwill,” and “gwills always go fust!” Madelyn stepped in and explained to the silky-haired little demon that the really important people went last, and that’s why the bride was the last one in the parade down the aisle. The little girl looked thoughtful, then decided she didn’t want to be in the stupid parade anyway.

Okay, this was going to be fun.

The bubblegum wedding was nowhere close to being the most horrendous event Premier had ever taken on; in fact, it wasn’t even in the top ten. If she’d been in a better mood, Madelyn might even have found the excess of pink innocently charming, because after all their job was to give the bride what she wanted, to make her day special and, fingers crossed, trouble-free. This particular bride had wanted pink, and lots of it, so they’d given it to her. From fabrics to flowers to cakes and napkins and tablecloths and bridesmaids’ gifts, Premier had delivered. There were so many different shades of pink, making sure everything coordinated had taken some time and research. Maybe damn near everything in sight tomorrow would be pink, but by God every single scrap would be well-coordinated. Clashing shades were not allowed. The effect didn’t look bad; it was even pretty, if she’d been in the mood for pink.

Aside from the profusion of one color, getting this particular wedding put together had been a breeze. Both families were nice, everyone was friendly, and there wasn’t a drama queen in the bunch, except for the flower girl. The bride and groom were obviously very much in love. They were lovely, pleasant young people who looked at each other with stars in their eyes. If it would help all their weddings go this smoothly, Madelyn would gladly invest in a pink wardrobe of her own. Maybe matching pink suits for everyone at Premier. Pink business cards. Hot pink Jags. Jaclyn would be horrified at the very idea.

For the first time in this very long day, Madelyn felt a hint of a real smile briefly touch her lips.

When the rehearsal was successfully over and the flower girl convinced that she’d be the star of the show if she agreed to go down the aisle ahead of the bride, the bride’s mother very graciously invited Peach and Madelyn to dinner, which was being held at one of the finest seafood restaurants on this side of town. On another night she might have been tempted, but it had been a very long day. To be honest, she was tired of being “on,” tired of pretending that everything was all right when nothing was all right. Madelyn smiled and declined the invitation, and reaffirmed the time for their meeting at the church tomorrow evening.

In the parking lot, Peach followed Madelyn to her car, instead of heading for her own. “How’s Jaclyn doing? Really. I don’t want a generic and halfhearted ‘fine’ as an answer. She seems to be holding up very well, but since you’re her mother I figure you’d know if she’s putting on a show or if she’s really as calm as she’s acting.”

“She’s handling it better than I would be, if I were in her shoes.” Madelyn tried very hard to separate business from her worry about her daughter, but the worry was never absent. As the day had passed, that worry had been buried under a mounting anger. Anger was easier than worry; she could handle anger. Now, if she could just settle on one person with whom to be angry, but there were so many targets she couldn’t pick just one.

Should she be mad at Carrie Edwards, for being a supreme bitch and bringing this upon them all? Or should her target be Detective Eric Wilder, who had the absolute gall to treat Jaclyn like a criminal? At the moment it was easier to just be mad at everyone and everything.

“The murder itself is bad enough,” she growled, “but it chaps my butt that anyone could think, even for a minute, that she could do something like that. I swear, if I could get that Eric Wilder alone in a room—”

“I know what I’d want to do with him if I had him in a room to myself,” Peach muttered, then she breathed a warm hum before she caught herself, and quickly added, “He needs a good spanking.” She stopped, pursed her lips. “Well, that didn’t come out sounding the way I meant it.”

Madelyn sighed. “Actually, it probably did. How can a trained detective be so blind? Jaclyn isn’t capable—”

Peach’s voice was unusually serious as she said, “I don’t know about that. Aren’t we all capable, somewhere deep down? With the proper opportunity and the right motivation? … Not that I think Jaclyn killed Carrie Edwards,” she added quickly. “Not for one second. But in the right circumstances, to protect someone you love, don’t you think you might be able to kill someone? I know I could. Maybe whoever killed Carrie is someone no one thinks is capable of such violence.”

“I suppose,” Madelyn said softly. Peach was trying to be reasonable, when Madelyn didn’t want to be reasonable. She was a mother, and her child was being threatened. Her anger flared to life again. “I can tell you this much: if Jaclyn had decided to kill Carrie Edwards, she would’ve done it in a way that didn’t draw attention to herself. She’s too smart to murder the woman right after being slapped and fired in front of a handful of reliable witnesses.” If Jaclyn had decided to kill Carrie Edwards—not that she would’ve done it, but in theory—the body never would’ve been found. Madelyn didn’t have a second’s doubt about that, because she and her daughter were so much alike, and that’s what she would have done.