by Laura Durham
“Hey, babe,” Reese said. “Is everything okay?”
I realized we’d spoken less than half an hour ago, and we normally weren’t the kind of couple to talk throughout the day. I took a few steps toward the shelving unit holding Leatrice’s turntable and her collection of vinyl records.
“I have good news. I found Fern and he has an alibi.”
“Okay,” he said slowly. “Where is he?”
“He’s with Leatrice.” I flipped through the record covers, their paper edges soft from age and being handled. “They’re finishing up their hair.”
“Should I ask?”
“Probably not.” I picked out a big band album and looked at the tuxedoed men on the front, smiling as they held their instruments. “But I also wanted to tell you Kate and I remember another man in black at Perry’s. We can’t remember anything about him, but we know there was someone else at the party in black other than Fern and our grooms.”
Reese sighed on the other end. “Not too helpful. And what do you mean ‘our grooms?’”
“Our grooms from Saturday, Jesse and Stefan, were at Perry’s yesterday. They hadn’t left for their honeymoon, so they came to pay their respects.”
“Well, I didn’t interview them.”
“Maybe they left before you arrived. I did see them near the stairs before Richard secured the scene.”
“I should talk to them. When are they leaving for their honeymoon?”
“Next week.” I tapped my fingers on the album cover. “Wait a second. There were way more people in black. I totally forgot about the band. Those guys were in tuxes.”
“Weren’t they playing the whole time?”
“Bands always take breaks and sometimes one member at a time takes a break while the others play, especially in jazz groups. One of the band guys could have snuck away for a couple of minutes.”
“Good information. We questioned the band but didn’t ask if they’d taken breaks or switched out.”
I replaced the album. “Happy to help, Detective.”
He laughed quietly. “I like it when you call me Detective. It reminds me of when I first met you and you and your crew were always trying to give me the runaround.”
“What?” I tried to sound shocked. “Us?”
“Nice try, but completely unbelievable. I’ll check out the band, but can you ask Fern to swing by the station to make a statement about his alibi so we can clear him?” He paused, and I wondered if he was flashing back to the last time Fern had been in the precinct, and he’d almost turned it into a beauty salon. “On second thought, I’ll come to him. Where will he be?”
“Reese wants to come take your statement,” I said to Fern as I held my hand over the phone’s speaker. “Where will you be?”
Fern paused and glanced down at Leatrice’s wet hair. “Right here until I get her set and blown dry.”
“Leatrice’s apartment,” I told Reese.
“Will I get to see you?” he asked, his voice low, and I heard chattering in the background.
I took a peek at my phone’s clock. “Nope. Kate and I are late to pick up our cake designer.”
Kate looked at her own phone and yelped. She grabbed my phone and headed for the door. “She’ll call you later, lover boy. We’ve got to fly.” She clicked off the phone and tossed it back to me.
“Seriously?” I ran after her, out Leatrice’s door and the entrance to the building. Luckily, my car was parked out front and we both jumped in.
Kate threw on her seatbelt while I started the engine. “Churn rubber, Annabelle!”
Chapter 21
“Were you waiting long?” I asked as Alexandra lowered the square cake box into my back seat.
The willowy baker tossed her long chestnut hair over her shoulder and smiled, sitting down next to me and pulling the hem of her striped maxi dress into the car before closing the door. “I’d barely walked out of the terminal when you pulled up.”
Seeing Alexandra again reminded me how little she looked like what you’d imagine of a baker. Instead of being round and jolly, she was thin and elegant. Her clothes were chic and never covered in flour, and she spoke with a slight European accent she breezily explained as “a little bit of everywhere.” When she’d lived in DC, she’d been a media darling since she was as photogenic as her cakes, and her upbeat charm had made it easy for us to sell her. I was glad she was back, even if it was only for a few days.
Kate had moved to the back seat so Alexandra could sit in the front, and she patted the top of the white cardboard box. “Did you fly the cake over from Scotland in your lap?”
Alexandra laughed. “No. These are the gum paste carousel horses I made ahead. They’re wrapped in tissue paper so they won’t break, but I still didn’t want to check them with the airline.”
Even from the front seat I could smell the sugar of the gum paste. Alexandra was famous for her sugar flowers and the loose sugar petals she scattered around her cakes. I’d eaten many an edible petal at the end of weddings and could attest to the rush of energy a handful of them could produce. Even smelling the concentrated sugar perked me up.
“Do you want to go to your hotel or your rented studio space?” I asked, as the airport security officer waved at me to move out of the loading and unloading lane. I waved back and checked my blind spot before edging out into the slow-moving traffic and merging into the stream of cars headed back into the city.
“Would you mind terribly if we swung by Lush?” Alexandra asked. “Buster and Mack want to show me the floral palette they picked so I can match the fondant perfectly.”
“You got it.” I took the exit for the Key Bridge and we crossed over the Potomac River.
“So how are the plans for the shower coming along?” Alexandra asked, looking across the dark-blue river as a brave crew team skimmed across the surface of the still-frigid water.
Kate leaned her head between the two front seats. “We haven’t had much time to think about the shower. We’re still cleaning up after our wedding on Saturday.”
Alexandra twisted to face Kate. “Which one was that?”
“Two grooms. Big budget. High profile.”
“Who did the cake?” Alexandra asked. Always her first question about any wedding.
“No cake,” I said, making a right onto M Street and entering the Georgetown shopping district. “We did a stack of cheese wheels.”
“The grooms avoid sugar,” Kate explained. “But they love really good cheese.”
Alexandra made a face like she didn’t approve of this decision. “What about their guests? Didn’t some of them want cake?”
“I’m sure they did, but the wedding wasn’t really about the guests,” I said.
“It was about Stefan,” Kate said. “Until it was about Cher Noble.”
Alexandra held up a finger. “I beg your pardon?”
Kate giggled. “I keep forgetting how odd that sounds. She was our drag queen officiant who got strangled before the ceremony.”
That didn’t sound any less odd.
Alexandra gasped and put a hand to her own neck. “How awful.” She shook her head slowly. “And another murder at one of your weddings. Rotten luck, ladies.”
“Tell us about it.” I paused at a red light and glanced at the restaurant where Reese and I had eaten the night before. The windows were open and a few guests had already staked out their lunch tables with a view of the sidewalk. I looked away, hoping future dates would end better.
“Who would want to kill the wedding officiant before the wedding?” Alexandra asked.
“Someone who really wanted her dead, because it was not a pretty sight,” Kate said.
Alexandra’s mouth fell open. “You found the body too? I’m starting to think this isn’t bad luck. Are you sure someone isn’t trying to ruin your business?”
I exchanged a look with Kate in the rearview mirror. “There are a few planners we don’t like, but I can’t imagine them committing murder so they can take our weddi
ngs. Not even Brianna.”
“And a second drag queen was murdered yesterday, so it looks more like someone has it out for drag queens than for us,” Kate said.
I turned down a side street and found a parking spot a few doors down from Buster and Mack’s storefront, parallel parking my car quickly while a car behind me waited. Alexandra and Kate stepped out, and I followed them down the block and into the glass-fronted flower shop topped with a pale-green awning.
As we stepped inside the shop and a bell tinkled overhead to announce our arrival, I inhaled the aroma of fresh flowers. Rows of open white roses, fluffy pink peonies, and golden ranunculus sat in galvanized metal buckets on chrome racks along one wall. The rest of the open space was taken up by a long metal table surrounded by matching barstools and a tricked-out cappuccino station behind it. The concrete floors combined with all the metal to give the flower shop a hip, industrial look. Just like its owners.
“Thank heavens you’re here.” Mack hurried toward us with the chains on his black leather outfit echoing off the metal and glass. He gave us all air kisses and Alexandra an extra hug. “Buster is on a tear.”
“What about?” I asked, hearing the larger man storming around in the back of the shop.
Mack bit the edge of one thumbnail. “Have you heard of a new planner called Tina Pink?”
Kate rolled her eyes. “What is it with her? We only met her a few days ago and suddenly we can’t walk two feet without her getting stuck on the bottom of our shoes.”
“Who’s Tina Pink?” Alexandra asked.
“One of those planners we mentioned despising,” Kate said. “She and Brides by Brianna hold the top spots on our ‘most hated’ list.”
“We thought Brianna was the worst,” Mack said. “Until Tina popped onto the scene.”
“What did Tina do?” I asked as I heard something slam to the floor in the back.
“Is he cursing?” Kate asked as we heard a series of sounds more roars than words.
Alexandra cocked her head. “I think that’s French.”
It was only the rarest of occasions when I’d heard Buster or Mack utter an oath not containing the words “sugar” or “Jiminy Cricket.”
Mack flinched. “When he gets really upset, he slips into his high school French.” Mack’s cheeks reddened. “But he only ever learned the bad words. This was before he joined the Road Riders for Jesus.”
Alexandra listened for another second. “His accent’s not bad.”
Mack rubbed a hand over his bald head. “Tina Pink was hired by one of our longtime clients, but now she’s convinced them she can do the flowers for their fiftieth anniversary party.”
“Tina does flowers?” Kate made a tsk-ing sound. “I hate when vendors try to annex other people’s jobs. I mean, who wants a DJ who also performs your ceremony or a makeup artist who drives your limo?”
I rested a hand on Mack’s thick arm. “You know her flowers aren’t close to what you and Buster create.”
“Of course they aren’t,” Mack said, nervously tugging on his dark-red goatee. “But by the time the client clues in, we’ll have lost the contract. I don’t even know if Buster will take them back after they’ve jumped ship to another florist. You know he can get touchy about those things.”
“I’m sure he’ll calm down,” I said as another crash made us all jump.
“That’s it.” Buster stomped out from the rear of the shop. “He’s fired.”
“Who’s fired?” Kate whispered.
“Antonio. One of our setup crew.” Mack whispered back.
Buster saw us and unclenched his fisted hands. “I’m sorry you had to hear that, ladies. Please excuse my French.”
“Literally,” Kate mumbled.
Mack rushed up to Buster and rubbed the back of his leather vest. “You need to let it go.”
“Don’t worry about us,” I said to Buster. “We feel the same way about Tina.”
He raised his eyebrows and the black motorcycle goggles on his forehead went up with them. “You know her?”
“She tried to steal one of our clients right in front of Annabelle,” Kate said, taking Buster by the arm and leading him to a metal barstool.
He put his head in his hands and slumped over the high stainless steel table. “Not only did she steal a client, she also poached one of our best workers. Antonio has been with us for years.”
“I think I saw him at The Line yesterday,” I said, taking the stool across from Buster. “I thought someone in Tina’s crew looked familiar.”
“You’re right,” Kate said. “He’s been at all of the weddings we’ve done together. I can’t believe he left you.”
“To be clear, he didn’t leave.” Buster held up a hand. “He was moonlighting with her and thought we wouldn’t find out.”
“In this tight-knit business?” Alexandra shook her head. “I still hear things, and I live all the way across the pond.”
Buster shook a finger in the air. “That delivery to Perry’s is the last time he’ll ever work for us.”
Kate’s head snapped in my direction and she mouthed “Perry’s?”
“Wait a second,” I said. “You two did the flowers for Cher’s reception?”
“Someone named Hedda Lettuce ordered them,” Mack said. “Were you there? How did they look?”
“Great.” I fished around in my purse for my phone. “Remind me again, is Antonio a big guy?”
“Not as big as us, but he’s bulky enough to handle our heavy deliveries,” Buster said.
“He set up the bar on Saturday, didn’t he?” Kate asked.
Buster and Mack both bobbed their heads up and down.
I felt my stomach tighten. “And the uniform the Lush crew wears on-site or to deliver is . . .”
“Black pants and a black long-sleeve Henley with our logo on the front left corner,” Mack said. “Why?”
I fished around in my purse for my phone. I needed to call Reese. It looked like we’d found another man in all black who was at the murder scene. Both murder scenes.
Chapter 22
“Is it your goal to get everyone else’s employees killed or named as a suspect in a murder investigation, or is it a happy accident?” Richard asked, stomping into my apartment with his leather crossbody bag and Hermes in tow. He placed the bag on my couch, and the tiny Yorkie jumped out and began sniffing the upholstery, no doubt smelling crumbs of the cupcakes from earlier in the morning.
I was glad I’d had time, after dropping Alexandra off at her hotel and Kate off at her apartment, to change into yoga pants and a T-shirt and throw my hair into a ponytail. It was better to be comfortable when dealing with one of Richard’s meltdowns.
“Why are you complaining?” I shut the door behind him and sat back down on the couch where I’d been going over the paperwork for Debbie and Darla’s baby shower. Hermes scampered over to me and put his paws on my leg so he could give my papers a thorough nose inspection. “The guy I told Reese about doesn’t even work for you. Antonio works for Buster and Mack. At least he used to.”
“I’m being outraged for them.” Richard tapped one foot rapidly as he stared me down. “First you get one of my best waiters implicated in the murder. Then he gets killed. Now you’ve managed to get one of Buster and Mack’s employees implicated. Let’s hope he doesn’t go the same way as Blanche.”
I put down the event schedule I was red lining, and Hermes turned around three times before curling up on top of it. “Blanche didn’t get killed because I told the cops he might know something.”
“Are you so sure? Why else would he have been killed if not to shut him up?”
“I don’t know. There’s still a chance this is a hate crime and someone is out to get drag queens for no other reason than they’re not mainstream.”
Richard paused and thought for a moment. “What a sobering thought.”
I watched him blink hard a few times, and I wondered if he was thinking he wasn’t exactly mainstream. Come to think of
it, none of my friends were. I stood up and reached for his hand. “Why don’t we have a drink? I think my nerves need a little calming after the past few days.”
He sank onto the couch, absently rubbing Hermes’s head while I headed for the kitchen. “So why are the cops interested in one of Buster and Mack’s guys?”
I looked across the opening between my kitchen and living room. “Wait a second? You read me the riot act before even knowing why Antonio was taken into custody?”
“You know the mantra I live and die by, Annabelle.”
“Asking for forgiveness is easier than asking for permission,” I said as I pulled my last chilled bottle of sparkling wine out of the fridge.
“You really have been an excellent protégé, you know.”
I made a face I knew Richard couldn’t see, but it made me feel better. I grabbed a dish towel and two champagne flutes from my cabinets before returning to the living room. “You know how the police were interested in Fern because two witnesses at Perry’s claimed to see a man in black messing with the gold velvet before Blanche was strangled behind it?”
Richard took the two glasses from me and inspected them. Hermes did the same. “They didn’t really think Fern could have done it, did they?”
I peeled off the gold foil from the top of the bottle and unwound the wire cage sitting over the cork, dropping both on my glass coffee table. “I don’t think Reese thought he was a real suspect, but if you’ll remember, there weren’t many men in black at the reception for Cher Noble.”
“Not your typical memorial reception, I suppose.”
I draped the yellow dish towel over the cork and twisted the bottle until the cork jumped out with a pop. Hermes yipped in response. “The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized there were other men in black there like the band members in tuxedos. Then Buster and Mack mentioned Antonio’s last job for them was delivering the flowers. The Lush uniform is all black.”
“You’re right,” Richard said. “The behind-the-scenes people almost always wear black.”
“I know we do.” Although the black dresses Kate and I wore to work weddings weren’t an official uniform, they helped us blend into the crowd and gave us a cohesive look.