Veiled Threats (28 page)

He drummed his fingers on the table. The pink linen cloth muffled the sound, and his hand drew back into a fist. “A ctually, it's a stupid question. No, it's not a stupid question, it's just jumping to a stupid conclusion, but—” I began to fidget myself at that point, and he pressed on abruptly. “Did you turn me down because I'm Jewish?”

I stopped fidgeting. “Did I
what?
”

“You heard me. On the Fourth of July, at your place, when you said we were too different to get involved with each other, was that the reason?”

“Of course not!”

“Then what was the reason?”

He sounded like a reporter again, badgering me. “I don't know. I mean, I know but I can't explain. Anyway, it wasn't because you're Jewish.”

“Why, then? Answer me.”

Resentment, and champagne, made me reckless. “It was because you're … short.”

He cocked his head and stared at the tabletop, his brows drawn together, as if I were speaking a foreign and rather difficult language. “Short.”

“Yes, short. I'm very tall, and you're, well, you're not, and I'm just uncomfortable with—”

Aaron opened his mouth wide and laughed, louder than he had laughed that day at the baseball game, loud enough to set the large uncle laughing, and certainly loud enough to irritate me.

“Listen,” I said, flushing. “I've got a right to my opinions.”

“That's not an opinion,” he chortled. “That's just nonsense. And here I was getting paranoid …” He wiped his eyes. “Look, Carnegie, it's no problem. You'll get over it.”

I stood up and took my place card with me. “I doubt that very much, and even if I did, it's a moot point, isn't it?”

As if on cue, the brunette appeared with a champagne flute in each manicured hand. “What's a moot point?”

“Everything!” he said gaily. “Everything's moot, everything's up for grabs. Gail, this is Carnegie Kincaid, the very tall wedding lady. Carnegie, this is my somewhat short sister Gail, who's been nursing me back to health.”

I gazed at her, at her white teeth and her crow-black hair and the look of Aaron Gold she had around her chocolate brown eyes.

She put down the glasses with a mischievous smile. “So
you're
the one he keeps talking about!”

“I am?” I said, with more than champagne fizzing inside me. “I guess I am.”

M
ASKS ARE DANGEROUS
. T
HE MEREST SCRAP OF SILK OR SLIP
of cardboard can eclipse one's civilized identity, and set loose the dark side of the soul.

Trust me. You take a pair of perfectly well-behaved newspaper reporters, or software engineers or whatever, dress them up as Spider-Man and a naughty French maid and whammo! It's a whole new ball game.

Which is why this party was getting out of hand. Free drinks can make people crazy, but free costumes make them wild. Two hundred big black envelopes had gone out to Paul and Elizabeth's friends and colleagues, inviting them to a Halloween engagement party in the Seattle Aquarium, down at Pier 59 on Elliott Bay. And tucked inside the envelope was a very special party favor: a coupon for the persona of one's choice at Characters Inc., a theatre-quality costume shop. So tonight, more than a hundred and fifty reasonably civilized people were living out their fantasies among the fishes. And the fantasies were getting rowdy.

It all started innocently enough: Madonna flirting with Mozart, Death with his scythe trading stock tips with Nero and his violin, Albert Einstein dirty dancing with Monica Lewinsky. And everyone toasting the engaged couple with affection and good cheer. Paul Wheeler, the groom-to-be, was news editor at the
Seattle Sentinel
newspaper; he made a skinny, smiley swashbuckler, sort of Indiana Jones Lite. His fiancée, Elizabeth (“
not
Liz”) Lamott, was a tough-minded Microsoft millionaire who had retired at twenty-nine. Dressed as Xena the Warrior Princess, Elizabeth looked both drop-dead sexy and more than capable of beheading barbarian warlords. The Wheeler and Lamott families would all be at the wedding in three weeks
an
extravaganza at the Experience Music Project— but tonight's bash was more of a co-ed bachelor party.

And like so many bachelor parties, headed straight to hell. Luke Skywalker was juggling martini glasses, quite unsuccessfully, near “Principles of Ocean Survival.” Mister Rogers had knocked over the sushi trays at “Local Invertebrates.” Various members of the Spice Girls and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band were disappearing into the darkened grotto of “Pacific Coral Reef” and returning with their costumes askew. And at all the liquor stations, masked revelers had begun pushing past the bartenders to pour their own drinks
a
danger sign even when the crowd is in civvies.

I wasn't wearing a mask, and I certainly wasn't fantasizing, except about keeping my professional cool and getting our damage deposit back from the Aquarium. It was my hands the party was getting out of:
Made in Heaven Wedding Design, Carnegie Kincaid, Sole Proprietor.
I usually stick to weddings, too, but business had been iffy ever since I'd been a suspect in the abduction of one of my brides. Everybody reads the headlines, nobody reads the follow-up, and now my name, besides being weird in the first place, had a little shadow across it in the minds of some potential clients.

So an extra event with an extra commission had been hard to turn down. And the formidable Ms. Lamott had been impossible to turn down. When Elizabeth wanted something she got it, whether she was launching products for Bill Gates or, more recently, harvesting charity donations from Seattle's crop of wealthy thirty-somethings. Elizabeth asked me to manage her
engagement party in person, I explained that I really don't do costumes, and suddenly, somehow, there I was in a long jaggedy-hemmed black gown and a crooked-peaked witch's hat, stationed by the champagne at “Salmon & People: A Healthy Partnership,” and reminding my waiters that cleaning broken glass off the floor comes first, no matter how many guests are demanding more booze.

One guest did his demanding in silence: a well-tailored Count Dracula with an especially realistic rubber mask, complete with fangs, that covered his entire head. He pantomimed to the barman with his empty glass, bowed grandly in thanks when it was filled, and disappeared back into the crowd. Nobody
in
cluding me— seemed to know who the Count was, and he was steadfastly refusing to speak, no matter who cajoled him, so his voice wouldn't give him away. It was actually getting spooky, watching Dracula move from group to group of party guests, flourishing his cape. I half expected him to morph into a bat and soar away.

“Carnegie!”

“What?” I snapped. “Oh, sorry, Lily. I'm losing my mind here. Are you having a good time?”

Lily James, my best friend, was also my date for the party, because I'd had a spat with Aaron Gold, my who-knows-what. The spat was about Aaron's smoking, which I found deplorable and he found to be none of my business. But it went deeper than that. W e were teetering on the brink of being lovers, and life on the brink was uncomfortable. At least it was for me; I kept hesitating and analyzing and wondering if we were right for each other. Aaron's view was that we could analyze just as easily lying down.

Aaron was at the party, of course. All of the
Sentinel
's reporters were there, gleefully adding to the pandemonium. I could see a laughing, breathless bunch of them now, escorting Paul and Elizabeth up the tunnel from the underwater dome room, where the dancing was. As they headed for the martini bar, Aaron put his arm around Corinne Campbell, the paper's society writer. A handsome couple: he was quite dashing in a Zorro mask and cape, and she made a blonde, bosomy Venus in a filmy white gown crisscrossed with silver cords. I knew Corinne professionally, of course
she
often wrote about my brides
and
I'd been seeing more of her now that she was one of Elizabeth's bridesmaids. She
wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she could be pleasant enough, in an overeager kind of way. Especially to men. I bet
she
found the scent of cigarettes manly and exciting.

“I said, I'm having a fine time!” Lily's voice broke through this sour speculation. “You're not listening, are you?”

“Sure I am. You're having a fine time.”

Lily was certainly looking fine, a statuesque black-skinned Cleopatra, rubber snake and all, with her wide, high-lidded eyes elaborately painted into an Egyptian mask of gold and indigo. By day, Lily staffed the reference desk at Seattle Public, but tonight she was every inch the voluptuous and commanding Queen of the Nile. Of course, Lily could be voluptuous and commanding in sweatpants, I'd seen her do it. Her glittery make-up caught the light as she gazed around and let loose the deep, provocative laugh that often startled the library's patrons. “This is a fabulous place for a party!”

“You bet your asp it is,” I said, scanning the crowd over her shoulder. “But it's tough to supervise, with all these corridors and cul-de-sacs. I've got a couple of off-duty cops here as security and I haven't talked to either one in hours except on the two-way radio. Makes me nervous.”

I was especially nervous about “Northwest Shores,” a dead-end grotto past the martini bar. I'd already had to shoo some Visigoths off the handrail of the shorebird exhibit down at the end. The water in the little beach scene was only a foot deep, hardly a drowning matter, but if anybody tumbled over backwards it would terrify the long-billed curlews and they'd never let me rent this place again. The management, I mean, not the curlews.

“Well, everyone but you is having a blast,” said Lily.

I was about to agree when we heard an angry shout from the martini bar. A knot of people tightened suddenly, their backs to us, intent on a scene we couldn't see.

Over their heads, arcing high in the air, rose the scythe of Death.

I shoved my way through the crowd. I'm almost six feet tall, so I can shove with the best. Lunging like a fencer, I parried the scythe with my broomstick just in time to save Zorro from having his hair parted right through his hat.

“What on earth is going on here? Syd? Aaron?”

Death's hood had fallen back, revealing the fat and furious face of Sydney Soper, a big-shot local contractor and personal friend of the bride-to-be. That explained what was going on. Aaron had done an article, the first in a series, questioning Soper's methods of winning state highway contracts. With Seattle and Bellevue booming, and traffic approaching Los Angeles levels, those contracts ran into the millions. According to Aaron, a lot of millions were being misspent, if not actually swindled.

So now Death was pissed off at Zorro, and Zorro was standing his ground and grinning, a lock of raven-black hair flopping down beneath his black caballero hat. I knew from personal experience how infuriating that grin could be, and I felt for Soper. Especially since, unlike me, Soper probably didn't appreciate the sexy brown eyes above the grin. His own eyes, hard and pale as pebbles, were bulging with anger. God knows what Aaron had said to provoke the Grim Reaper, but he was lucky the scythe was plastic.

As I hesitated, wondering how to cast a soothing spell, the scene was stolen from me by a gypsy queen. Mercedes Montoya, another of Elizabeth's bridesmaids, stepped up in a swirl of bright skirts and a chiming of bracelets. She was a classic Castilian beauty, via Mexico City, with a mane of midnight curls framing cheekbones so sharp you could cut yourself. And a mind to match. Mercedes had recently decamped from the
Sentinel
for the headier world of TV news, and she was already making a name for herself. The camera, as they say, loved her.

“Mister Soper,” she murmured, with the faintest hint of an accent in her caressing, dark-chocolate voice. “This is a party. Come dance with me.”

She held out a slim brown hand, sparkling with costume jewelry. Soper glared at her, breathing hard, but Mercedes’ hand never wavered and the smile never left her narrow, aristocratic lips. I marveled at her self-assurance, even as I waited for the burly contractor to snarl her off. We all waited, Zorro and Cleopatra and the rest of us, through a long, uncomfortable moment. And then damned if Soper didn't take her hand and walk away, with a flush rising up the back of his thick neck. Taming the fury of Death, that's what I call magic.

The knot of guests unraveled, many of them following Mercedes
and Soper to the dance floor. I saw Dracula bow in silent gallantry to an unaccompanied hippie chick, and sweep her down the tunnel with his scalloped black cape fluttering around her tie-dyed shoulders. Even Lily went off, to boogie with the Visigoths, and I was left with Aaron Gold.

Down below, the DJ cued up “Respect”—Otis, not Aretha. “Look, Aaron, the dome room's next on my rounds, and I'm due for a break anyway. Come dance with me?”

He looked away uncomfortably, straightening his shiny black cape. “I promised Corinne, when she gets back from the restroom. If she ever gets back. She's spending half the party in there.”

“Oh. Well, don't let me keep you.” Corinne, with her golden curls and her syrupy Southern drawl and her icecream–scoop cleavage. I have long red hair, which I'm regrettably vain about, but I'm also skinny as a broomstick, and in my witch's hat I towered over Aaron's middling height. The difference in our statures bothered me, and amused him. He just called me silly nicknames, and insisted that he didn't have to be bigger than me, only smarter and more charming.

“Corinne's kind of my date tonight, Stretch,” he was saying. “I'm worried about her. She's been really down since she broke up with that Russian guy.”

“She's been looking kind of rocky,” I agreed. “But I think it was Boris who broke up with her.”

Actually, I knew it was. Boris Nevsky
Lily
called him Boris the Mad Russian Florist
had
given me the gory details as we planned Paul and Elizabeth's wedding flowers. “She vanted to get
merried!
” he'd announced, mournful and astonished, shaking his shaggy Slavic head over the parrot tulips and the hellebores. Having dated Boris a couple of times myself, I was astonished too, but there's no accounting for taste.

“I wondered about that,” said Aaron. “Corinne claims
she
dumped
him
, but she's awfully depressed about it. And I think this wedding stuff is making her feel extra-single. Funny how weddings do that to women. Us bachelor groomsmen are feeling just fine.”