Veil of Night

by Linda Howard

  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.

  Cars were pulling out of the parking lot now, as the wedding party made their way from the church to the rehearsal dinner. She and Peach waved to them all, smiling and calling cheerful goodbyes.

  Madelyn very much wanted to talk to Jaclyn, if for no other reason than to tell her daughter that she was here for her, to ask, again, if there was anything she needed. But the rehearsal Jaclyn was handling had started an hour later than the bubblegum rehearsal, so now wasn’t the time to call. She had to wait for Jaclyn to call her.

  With murder and suspicion in the air, and undirected anger building rapidly, Madelyn wasn’t anxious to be alone. She tilted her head at her friend. “Do you have plans for dinner?”

  “Does Lean Cuisine count?” Peach asked wryly.

  “No, it doesn’t. I have some lasagna in the freezer. Come home with me and I’ll crank up the microwave and open a bottle of red wine. We can kick off our shoes and relax for a while. You still haven’t told me all the details of last weekend’s date, and to be honest, I could stand to be distracted for a while.”

  Peach sighed. “You silver-tongued devil, you had me at lasagna.”

  Madelyn had hopes that Peach’s company and a couple glasses of wine would help to ease her toward a decent night’s sleep, but it was likely a hopeless cause. Until her baby was in the clear, she wouldn’t rest easy.

  This wasn’t the first Bulldog wedding Premier had ever directed, but Jaclyn couldn’t help noticing that the participants of this one were more rabid fans than most, and that was saying something. It was the middle of summer, and for the rehearsal the groom and groomsmen were in the jerseys of their favorite football team. She was a bit surprised that someone hadn’t suggested—thank goodness—passing the rings down the aisle by way of a spiraling football festooned with red and black ribbon. She might’ve had to put her foot down. In her experience, throwing anything at a wedding wasn’t a good idea.

  In the South, college football was practically a religion, yet she was still surprised when the bride requested a team theme. It was Premier’s job to give the bride what she wanted, but finding the exact shade of Georgia Bulldog red fabric, ribbon, and flowers was a bitch.

  And Diedra had been forbidden to mention, at any point during the planning or execution of the wedding, that she was a diehard Georgia Tech fan. Wedding planners had been fired for less. Jaclyn had been to more than one event-planner convention where discussions centered around the dicey subject of college football and how to deal with the intense rivalries and loyalties. In Alabama, for instance, no one with any sense scheduled a wedding on the same day Auburn and Alabama played, because no one would attend the wedding other than family members, and most of them would be pissed at missing the game, which wouldn’t make for a happy time.

  Diedra would be with her tomorrow night, for the wedding, but one representative was enough for the rehearsal unless Diedra had just wanted to be here, which she hadn’t. Nevertheless, Jaclyn could have easily begged off—she was the boss—and let Diedra handle tonight’s chores, but she wanted to stay busy. No, she needed to stay busy with something, anything, other than thoughts of dead brides and annoying cops.

  No, she wasn’t going to think about the annoying cop. That horse was dead, and she was getting frustrated because she couldn’t seem to stop kicking it. Being angry was okay. Being angry was probably healthy. Being hurt was silly and unreasonable, two words she didn’t like when applied to herself. All day she’d been telling herself to just get over it, with limited success. Hell, how about no success?

  Her attention was yanked back to the rehearsal when the groom barked, a distinctive Bulldog woof of pleasure, excitement, and gratification. Jaclyn fought to keep her face still, her expression bland. Was this the groom’s normal way of expressing joy? Did he bark during sex? The mind boggled. The good thing was, the bride laughed; the bad thing was, several other men barked in response.

  It was going to be a long night. Jaclyn simply wasn’t in the mood for barking.

  Two of the younger children, the bride’s niece and nephew, were entertaining themselves by running up and down the aisle, playing some game only they could understand, but it involved a lot of shrieking and giggling, which blended nicely with the barking. Because the mindless activity kept them busy, and they weren’t too loud—too loud being subjective—everyone let them have their fun. The family was accustomed to the chaos. Even Jaclyn had tuned them out, as she instructed the wedding party and then stood back to watch the rehearsal. If the processional had to dodge around the youngsters, no one seemed to mind. The mood of the evening was boisterous and happy.

  She supposed it was too much to ask that the evening continue without some sort of disaster. The little boy—four years old or so, Jaclyn would guess—rounded the end of a pew at a dead run, tripped and fell forward, landing facedown in the center of the side aisle just in front of her. For a long, heart-stopping minute, he didn’t make a sound.

  Her heart in her mouth, she hurried to the little boy to assess the damage. Good Lord, was he unconscious? That fear was banished when he abruptly began to wail, a sound that grew in volume and pitch until it resembled a steam whistle. She knelt beside him, touched his back, which if anything sent his screams into a dimension she couldn’t quantify. Everyone began hurrying toward them, while the recorded music continued to play.

  “Come on, sweetie, let’s sit up and see where you banged your head,” she said, hoping there wasn’t any blood. She wasn’t overly squeamish, but—Bracing herself, she helped him to roll over and sit up, then she literally breathed a huge sigh of relief when she got a look at his face. There was a lot of tears and snot, but no blood.

  “You’re going to be just fine,” Jaclyn said gently, brushing his hair back to see if there was a knot on his forehead.

  Upon hearing her voice, and realizing that it was not his mother or grandmother who had come to his rescue but was instead a stranger, the kid squalled even louder.

  Did she really want one or two of these? Jaclyn thought as she rose to her feet and backed away to allow the mother, who was very calm given the volume of the scream, to take her place. There were no small children in Jaclyn’s life; she had no brothers or sisters and so no nieces or nephews. If this was what she had to look forward to, maybe she was better off getting a gerbil. Or a fish.

  Which was a very sad thou
ght. Screams or not, that wasn’t the way she wanted to live the rest of her life.

  The mother checked the child’s mouth, nose, and head, as if she’d completed this particular check a thousand times, and maybe she had. She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and wiped away the snot. The kid kept screaming, to which his mother responded with a gentling shush. She didn’t seem to be worried, so Jaclyn figured she could stop worrying herself.

  And then a familiar voice behind Jaclyn said, “What are y’all doing, skinning that kid alive?”

  She went rigid, and the hair on the back of her neck lifted in horror. Oh my God, what was he doing here? If he questioned her in front of clients, if he was here to actually arrest her, she’d … she’d kill him, and then he’d have a real reason to slap on the cuffs.

  Instead of grabbing her hands and cuffing her, he brushed by her, crowding so close in the aisle she had to step back and even then she could smell him, momentarily feel his warmth. He crouched down beside the screeching little boy, brushed back his jacket so that his big black gun was visible along with the badge clipped to his belt, and ruffled the kid’s hair with his big hand. “Looks like you had a spill.”

  The kid momentarily stopped screaming, distracted by this big man he didn’t know. He saw the gun and the badge, and his eyes got big. He gave a big sniff and nodded his head. His mother shot an assessing look at Eric, then made a lightning decision and stood, stepping back out of the way. She was just a mother; how could she hope to compete with the enticement of a real gun and a shiny badge?

  “Is that real?” the kid asked, pointing at the gun.

  “Sure is. The badge is real, too.”

  “Bad boys, bad boys,” the kid started singing. Not bad. He could carry a tune, even if he was only four. His lip started trembling and tears welled in his eyes again.