by Laura Durham
“I don’t know, I mean, no, of course not.”
We passed the Capitol Building, and I glanced up at the white-marble-domed building—one of the tallest in the city but still only about half as tall the Washington Monument. Kate made a hard right a few blocks down and began hunting for street parking.
“I need to go into a meeting, Cara, but I will need those signed by close of business today.”
“I don’t know. Maybe we should do another walk-through . . .” Cara began, but I clicked off the phone.
“So is there a chance we’ll have the weekend off in a few weeks?” Kate asked. “A full weekend would really help with my dating schedule.”
“Probably not. Even if Mrs. I Don’t Know can’t get her act together, I have a feeling the bride and groom will.”
Kate frowned. “Wishful drinking on my part.”
“Something like that.” I shook my head. “Are you saying working for me is cramping your social life?”
“Yes.” Kate let out a breath. “Thanks for finally noticing.”
I shook my head. “If this is what your cramped social life looks like, I’m afraid to see what it would be like otherwise.”
Kate winked at me as she angled her car into a snug spot across from the Richard Gerard Catering offices. “Be very afraid.”
She straightened out and lightly tapped the bumper in front of us before putting the car in park.
“Thanks for driving today.” I looked at the other car’s bumper and felt relieved there was no dent.
“No problem. I couldn’t stay parked in front of your building forever.”
Kate had let me switch out my car for hers before we left, so now I had the prime parking spot in front of my building. I smoothed out my blue-floral print fit-and-flare dress as I stepped out of the car, hanging my black Kate Spade purse in the crook of my arm.
Kate traded her flat driving shoes for a pair of three-inch peep-toe nude heels and adjusted the scoop neckline of her celadon-green tank dress. Even after the adjustment, I still saw plenty of cleavage.
Kate led the way across the street to the painted brick townhouse with the metal nameplate by the door reading “Richard Gerard Catering.” She rapped her knuckles on the glass panes of the front door, rubbing her bare arms and stamping her feet to keep warm in the cool morning air.
Richard flung open the door and waved us inside. “Thank goodness you got here before the client. I can’t decide which signature cocktail works better for a carousel theme.”
For Debbie’s carousel-themed baby shower, we were decorating Darla’s house with actual vintage carousel horses, mirroring the walls, and serving gourmet versions of carnival food. The decor alone would cost more than most weddings.
I walked from the townhouse’s foyer into the adjoining tasting room and blinked a few times to get my bearings. The walls, which were normally painted in a shade of brackish green Richard referred to as “Baby’s First Summer,” were draped in pink-and-white-striped fabric. The table where we would be sitting to taste the menu had a round striped tent over it topped with a pink pennant and a shiny gold carousel horse as a centerpiece. No one could say Richard wasn’t embracing the carnival theme.
I peeked at his nose as subtly as I could. Almost no swelling and the redness was gone. I suspected he’d availed himself of high-end concealer, but if he did the look was flawless.
Richard led us to a mirrored bar and held out two cocktails. “So I’ve taken inspiration from the famous Carousel bar in New Orleans, of course.”
“Of course,” Kate said, picking up a martini glass filled with purple liquid and topped with white foam and a candied violet.
“You’re tasting Eudora Welty’s Purple Hat cocktail.” He put a hand on Kate’s arm. “The clients aren’t allergic to eggs, are they?”
Kate paused with the drink halfway to her lips. “Is that relevant to this drink?”
“Where do you think the foam comes from?” Richard asked, tilting the glass up to her lips for her. “But you can’t taste the egg white.”
I picked up a peach-hued drink in a rocks glass with a few small leaves floating on top. As I raised it to my mouth, I could smell the mint.
“And you’re drinking my version of the Fleur de Lis, Annabelle.” Richard put his hands on his hips as he watched us sip. “So, what do you think?”
“Delicious,” I said, swallowing the cocktail and tasting hints of lemon and possibly ginger ale. “And not too sweet.”
Richard smiled. “The original Fleur de Lis called for a cucumber wedge, but I know Debbie and Darla don’t like food in their drinks.”
“And the egg?” Kate asked, taking another sip of her drink.
Richard winked at her. “What they don’t know can’t hurt them, darling.”
I leaned one elbow against the bar. “So, I know you haven’t been worrying about these cocktails since yesterday. What do you know about Tina Pink?”
Richard pressed a hand to his heart. “Are you implying I dug up dirt on a new planner because she was unpleasant to us yesterday?”
I tilted my head and gave him a look. “Are you implying you didn’t?”
Richard laughed. “You know me too well.” He led us to a sleek gray couch—the only thing in the room untouched by the carousel decor. “For starters, she’s not a new planner. Up until about three weeks ago, she worked for Melody Hunter.”
“From Melody’s Mitzvahs?” Kate asked, perching on one end of the couch and crossing her legs so her skirt slid up to midthigh.
“Tina had a noncompete,” Richard continued. “But the word on the street is she started booking her own events before Melody had a clue she wanted to leave.”
Kate made a tsk-ing sound. “People have no loyalty anymore.”
“That’s why she looked familiar,” I said, leaning back on the couch. “Aside from being a Brianna clone, I must have seen her with Melody at industry events.”
“And now she’s switching over from mitzvahs to weddings?” Kate asked, finishing her drink and setting the empty martini glass on the wooden cocktail table.
“A little bit of everything. Corporate, mitzvahs, weddings.” Richard wrinkled his nose. “From what I hear, she’s desperate for anything and will slit your throat to get your clients.”
Kate put a hand to her neck. “How gruesome.”
Jim, Richard’s top catering captain, came into the room with a tray of hors d’oeuvres. He dropped the white, flat board to our level and I could see it held miniature cones. “Spicy tuna in a sesame cone?”
“Thank you.” I took a cone and admired the crimson tuna mixture mounded perfectly inside. I tuned my attention back to Richard. “Don’t mention throats around Fern. You know he’s still sensitive about Cher Noble being strangled.”
Jim jerked as if he’d been slapped, and the tray of cones nearly spilled into Kate’s lap. “I’m so sorry,” he stammered. “I must have had a muscle spasm.”
Richard shot him a dirty look but recovered with a smile. “No harm done. Why don’t you leave the tuna cones with me and go calm your nerves?”
Jim backed out of the room, sweat glistening on his bald head.
Richard sighed. “I hope he can pull himself together before the clients arrive.”
“Is he sick?” Kate asked, nibbling the edge of a cone.
“Who knows?” Richard waved a hand in the air. “He’s always got some drama. If it’s not with his flying squirrel, it’s with something else.”
I’d had several encounters with Jim’s flying squirrel, Rocky, and could attest to the level of crazy he could add to a situation.
I swallowed the last bite of the tuna cone, tasting the heat of the spices and washing it down with the remaining drops of my Fleur de Lis. I dabbed at my lips with a pink linen cocktail napkin. “I’m going to pop into the ladies room before Debbie and Darla arrive.”
“Don’t take too long,” Kate said. “You know it takes all of us to handle those two.”
I walked back into the foyer and down the hall, passing the bathroom and pushing my way through the swinging door into the kitchen. A waiter in a black tuxedo passed me as he headed out of the kitchen, giving me a curious look, and I spotted Jim with his hands on the black marble counter taking long breaths. A chef wearing a white jacket and hat stood next to the stove, plating up hors d’ oeuvres, and the air smelled of freshly baked bread.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Jim jumped when he heard my voice, and his eyes grew wide. “I’m fine. A little tired is all.”
“Are you sure it isn’t something else?” I stepped closer to him. “You seemed startled when you heard me mention Cher Noble’s murder.”
He flinched. “I didn’t know she’d been murdered. It was a bit of a shock to find out.”
“Did you know her?” I asked.
Jim glanced around him. “I knew of her more than anything.”
“I didn’t know you were hooked into the DC drag scene.”
He shook his head. “I’m not.” He dropped his voice. “But some of the other waiters are.”
I matched the volume of his voice. “Are you saying some other waiters at Richard Gerard Catering have connections to Cher?”
He bit his thumbnail. “The reason I remember Cher’s name so well is because I heard so much about her when she won the DC drag races last year.”
“The drag races?” I asked.
“Every Halloween in Dupont Circle, the drag queens in the city have a foot race in full heels and costumes. It’s a pretty big deal.”
I could imagine. “And the waiters here were friends with Cher?”
He gave a quick shake of his head. “One of them hated Cher because she beat him. He claims she cheated and complained about it for weeks.”
I felt my pulse quicken. “Which waiter?”
“He’s working with me today. His name is David.”
I remembered the tuxedoed waiter who’d passed me when I entered the kitchen. “So would you say David still holds a grudge against Cher?”
“That diva cheated me out of my trophy,” the sandy-haired waiter said from the doorway. “But she still can’t hold a candle to Blanche Davidian.”
Chapter 10
I stared at the waiter as he stepped into the kitchen and let the swinging door shut behind him. “Who’s Blanche Davidian?”
The waiter threw back his shoulders and batted his blue eyes at me. “Me, of course. Well, Blanche is my drag name. I don’t think Cher knows me as David.”
As I looked at the preening waiter with his high cheekbones and long lashes, I didn’t have a hard time imagining him dressed in drag. A part of me wondered if he had on fake lashes now.
“Knew you,” I corrected.
David, aka Blanche, set his tray on the granite countertop. “What?”
“Cher Noble is dead,” Jim said, his voice cracking. “She was strangled at yesterday’s wedding.”
David staggered back, his mouth dropping open. “How horrible. I had no idea.”
From his reaction, either he was an exceptional actor or Cher’s death really was news to him. I handed him a flute of champagne off a nearby silver tray. “You seem upset. I thought you hated Cher.”
David threw back the entire glass in a single gulp. “We were rivals in the drag world, and things can get a little catty sometimes, but that doesn’t mean I wanted her dead.”
The chef opened the oven doors and pulled out two cookie sheets filled with golden brown puffed-up pastries. Both Jim and David jumped a bit as the metal sheets clattered against the cooling racks. I didn’t recognize the bite-sized hors d’oeuvres, although the buttery scent reminded me I hadn’t eaten breakfast, and I wondered if this was one of Richard’s special carousel-themed creations.
I eyed David as he slumped against the counter. “Did either of you work yesterday’s wedding?”
Jim shook his head. “I worked all of Richard’s corporate events during the week so I was off.”
“I was supposed to, but I went home sick about an hour into load in.” David rubbed his forehead. “Richard read me the riot act about it, too.”
“So Richard can attest to the fact you left early?” I asked.
“I’m sure he remembers yelling at me, and I know the other waiters overheard him.” David raised an eyebrow. “Richard can get a little high-strung during weddings.”
He didn’t have to tell me. I’d had to talk my friend off the ledge when the wrong teaspoons had been delivered or the napkins weren’t hemstitched.
David shook his head. “Why was Cher at the wedding in the first place? She wasn’t on our staff.”
“She was performing the wedding ceremony,” I said.
David’s face darkened. “I was the one who told her how to get approved by the DC courts to do weddings. That queen was always trying to upstage me.”
The kitchen door flew open, banging against the wall, and we all spun around.
Richard stood holding the door with one arm and his other hand on his hip. “So this is where my staff is hiding.” His eyes shifted to me. “Annabelle, what are you doing?”
I reached for one of the highball glasses of water on the champagne tray. “Grabbing a glass of water. I didn’t want to bother Jim since I was so close to the kitchen anyway.”
Richard narrowed his eyes as if he didn’t believe me. “Buster and Mack have arrived with the flowers, and the clients will be here soon, so if you’re done distracting my paid employees . . .”
“Sorry,” I muttered, casting a final look at Jim and David as I let Richard wave me out of the kitchen.
Richard caught me by the elbow after the kitchen door closed. “What were you really doing in there?”
“Did you send David home from the wedding yesterday?” I answered his question with one of my own.
“I didn’t have a choice. He claimed to have a twenty-four-hour stomach virus, although I have a feeling he was really hungover.” He sighed. “It’s so hard to find good, attractive help these days.”
“Have you ever considered not making physical attractiveness a prerequisite?”
Richard gave me a scandalized look. “If you’re suggesting I hire waiters with dad bods, you can bite your tongue.”
“There’s a happy medium between dad bod and male model, you know.”
“Richard Gerard Catering has a reputation for exceptional food served by exceptionally good-looking people. The world may have been taken over by millennial slackers, but I refuse to lower my standards.”
I jerked a thumb in the direction of the kitchen. “I’ve got news for you. Your pretty boy waiters are all millennials.”
Richard opened his mouth to respond then closed it again.
“Annabelle.” Mack poked his head into the hall. “We need your opinion about the flowers.”
I left Richard in the hall, spluttering about the technical age range of the millennial generation while I joined Mack in the tasting room. A tightly packed garland of pale-pink carnations had been swagged around the top of the table’s canopy, and Buster balanced on a tall stepladder attaching a large white feather plume to the head of the gold carousel horse.
“Carnations?” Richard asked as he entered the room behind me.
Buster held up a hand from his precarious position on the top of the ladder. “I knew you were going to say something, but hear us out. You know we’d never use carnations as a filler flower, but when used in mass like this, you can hardly tell they’re carnations.”
Richard wrinkled his nose. “I could tell from a mile away blindfolded.”
“I don’t mind so much,” Kate said, tapping her high heel on the hardwood floor. “We use peonies and roses so often, it’s nice to throw another flower in the mix.”
“Exactly what we thought.” Mack threw a beefy arm around her shoulder, and the chains on his leather jacket jingled. “It’s something different.”
“So I suppose today is the day you all take leave of your senses?” R
ichard asked. “First Annabelle suggested I hire ugly waiters and now this?” He lowered his voice to a near hiss. “Carnations?”
I put up a finger. “First of all, I did not suggest ugly waiters; I only floated the idea of not insisting every waiter be able to moonlight as a Chippendale dancer.”
Kate’s eyes grew big. “Do you have Chippendale dancers on your staff?”
Richard glared at me. “Not if Annabelle has her way.”
“Ridiculous,” I muttered to myself, turning to Richard. “When have I ever had a say in who you hire? The same hires who’ve been known to unleash flying squirrels on my events, I might add.”
Richard’s face became a mottled shade of pink, and he sunk onto the couch and began fanning himself with both hands. “Do you think other planners know about the flying squirrel incidents?”
“It isn’t like we have other planners attend our events,” Kate said, sitting down next to him and patting his knee. “Has Rocky ever made an appearance when you’ve worked with other wedding planners? Maybe Brides by Brianna or T Pink?”
“Bite your tongue,” Richard said to her. “You know I would never work with those hacks.”
“Do you mean Tina Pink?” Mack asked as he held the step stool while Buster descended.
“How do you know her already?” I asked. “She’s only been in business a few weeks.”
Buster frowned as he stroked a hand down his dark goatee. “She sent us an email asking us to send her leads before she even left Melody’s Mitzvahs.”
“We didn’t even know who she was,” Mack added. “It was pretty bold. Why would we kick leads over to someone who’s never even inquired with us before?”
“She should call herself Tina Tacky,” Richard said. “Especially since she’s hanging around Brianna.”
Buster made a low growling noise in his throat. “Another reason to never work with her. It sounds like those two were made for each other.”
It was no secret Buster and Mack despised Brianna after she’d told everyone she thought their floral design business, Lush, was overpriced and too fussy. Mention of her name was the only time I saw the Christian bikers get close to using profanity.