Eat, Prey, Love

by Laura Durham

  “You know Cliff and Ted from Insider Weddings magazine, don’t you?” Carol Ann asked.

  I held out a hand. “We’ve talked on the phone and emailed but never met.”

  The man with close-cropped brown hair and a tan smiled at me as he shook my hand. “I’m Cliff, the art director. Of course I remember talking with you about your Rose Garden wedding.”

  The other man’s bright-blue eyes widened with recognition. He was equally as tan as his partner but with lighter hair that he wore swept across his forehead. “The Rose Garden wedding was one of our favorites.”

  “We were very fortunate with that one,” I said, taking Ted’s hand. “It’s not every day you get to do a wedding at the White House.”

  Fern shook both men’s hands. “I did the hair for the Rose Garden wedding.”

  I could hear Richard sigh next to me. “The one wedding you didn’t use me on is the one that’s famous.”

  “You know I couldn’t bring an outside caterer into the White House,” I whispered to him. “And we’ve had famous weddings before.”

  “I don’t mean weddings famous for the dead-body count.”

  I elbowed him. The last thing I wanted was for our colleagues on this trip to find out about our penchant for solving murders at our weddings.

  “And this is Dahlia, my right-hand woman. For the past year, at least.” Carol gestured to the petite blonde who stood up to greet us, tucking a strand of her stick-straight hair behind her ear. Luckily for Richard, she wasn’t a hugger like her boss. “My intern, Kelly, is also with us, but she’s still recovering from jet lag in her room.”

  “Were your flights good?” Dahlia asked, her voice betraying the same soft Southern drawl as Carol Ann’s.

  I nodded. “Are we the first ones here aside from you?”

  Dahlia picked up a Lucite clipboard from her chair and inspected it. “Most folks are here already. A few arrive tonight before dinner, and one or two got delayed and will be here tomorrow. You’re the first group to join us for tea.”

  “Grab a chair, y’all.” Carol Ann said, patting the seat next to hers on the beige loveseat.

  We all sat—Richard and Kate next to Cliff and Ted, Fern beside Dahlia, and me with Carol Ann. A waiter wearing a black vest with a starched white apron over black pants set white porcelain teacups down in front of us with a small bow. Another waiter came behind him with a three-tiered display of tea sandwiches and miniature pastries.

  “Now we’re talking.” Kate reached for a bite-sized éclair.

  I poured myself a cup of tea. “I expected the food to be more . . .”

  Carol Ann touched a hand to my arm. “Indonesian? I know what you mean. I was thrown the first day I was served a British high tea. The resort has eight different restaurants, and none serve regular old Indonesian food. But you can try authentic Chinese and Japanese cuisine while you’re here. Not to mention Italian, Pan Asian, and French.”

  I took a bite of a shrimp tea sandwich. It may not have been traditional Indonesian food, but it was delicious. More so since I hadn’t eaten a meal in hours.

  “How did you find this resort?” I asked Carol Ann once I’d finished my sandwich. “And how did you convince them to host a group of wedding planners?”

  Carol Ann laughed. “They were thrilled to do it, honey. One of my clients held her wedding here a couple of years ago. Since then I’ve been dying to bring more planners over here to show it off. Can you imagine a more fabulous place to hold a wedding?”

  I glanced around the glittering lobby and the impeccably dressed staff moving seamlessly from guest to guest. My eyes went to the pool lined with statues and cabanas leading out to the glittering turquoise of the Indian Ocean. It was pretty fabulous.

  “And you put together all the activities?” I’d gotten a chance to glance at the schedule for the next few days and had found it filled with meals at all the resort restaurants as well as excursions into the country.

  “With the resort staff, of course,” Carol Ann said. “Not to mention Dahlia. She’s the one who handles all the details. She can keep track of a thousand things at once.”

  I looked at Dahlia, who was deep in conversation with Fern. I only hoped he wasn’t telling her one of his favorite raunchy jokes. They worked well on nervous brides, but I wasn’t sure how well they would go over with a sweet Southern blonde who didn’t look a day over twenty.

  “Hold on to her,” I said. “Good assistants are hard to find.” I wasn’t sure if I always put Kate in that category, but I’d seen enough bad assistants to be glad I had her.

  “I don’t think she’ll leave me.” Carol Ann lowered her voice. “I’ve become like a second mother to her since she started working for me. Her own mother passed away a few years ago. And you’ll meet my intern, Kelly, soon. Her mother was also a planner, so she’s a natural organizer. Both of my girls are amazing.”

  Before I could comment, I heard a deep voice call my name. I turned to see Buster and Mack, my go-to floral designers, lumbering toward us through the lobby, collecting stares as they went. I wasn’t sure if it was their size that was more striking to people—both men topped six feet and three hundred pounds—or the fact that they each had a goatee, wore black leather with chains, and were bald. On top of it all, Mack had an eyebrow piercing, and Buster wore a pair of black motorcycle goggles on the top of his head.

  “I thought you were working with the resort’s floral team,” Kate said when the men had reached us.

  Mack of the dark-red goatee leaned a hand against the back of a chair as he caught his breath. “We’re on our way, but we didn’t want to walk through the lobby without speaking to you.”

  “Did you just arrive?” Buster asked, his voice reverberating off the glass and marble in the lobby as he leaned in to give me an air kiss, his dark-brown goatee brushing my cheek.

  “Not too long ago,” I said. Buster and Mack had flown in on an earlier flight to get a head start training the in-house designers.

  Mack gave me a conspiratorial wink. “Aren’t the rooms stunning?”

  “Do you have your own hot tub?” Kate asked, and Mack nodded with a grin.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, gesturing to Carol Ann, Dahlia, and the men from Insider Weddings. “Do you know Buster and Mack from Lush?”

  Carol Ann nodded. “We met when they checked in.”

  “You can also call us the Mighty Morphin Flower Arrangers,” Mack said with a laugh. “All of our biker friends do.”

  Buster and Mack were members of a Christian biker gang, which meant they drove big Harleys, never cursed, and spent a lot of time praying for our souls. Especially Fern’s and Kate’s.

  Cliff stood and shook their hands. “We only know you by reputation, but your work on the Rose Garden wedding was breathtaking.”

  “Gorgeous,” Ted agreed.

  Mack waved away the compliment, but I knew he reveled in it. “Well, when you’re in a rose garden, you do roses.”

  “But a three-sided, ten-foot-high dome of them?” Cliff put a hand to his heart. “And to cover the backs of the chairs with roses, too? It was incredible.”

  I heard Richard grumbling about being the only one not at the Rose Garden wedding and shot him a look.

  “We’d better get going,” Buster said. “We have a lot to do before dinner tonight.”

  “I can’t wait to see it,” Carol Ann called after them as they hurried out of the lobby. She turned to me and patted my leg. “They sure are something, aren’t they?”

  “Their work is much less experimental than their personal style,” I assured her.

  Carol Ann smiled brightly. “Well, it couldn’t be wilder, could it?”

  Dahlia cleared her throat, and I noticed her face twitch before smiling. “Look who’s here.”

  Carol Ann looked over her shoulder. “Brace yourselves, it’s Sasha.”

  “Sasha?” I asked, recognizing the name but forgetting where she was from.

  “Society planner from New
York,” Dahlia said through her fake smile. “She won’t bother with you unless she thinks you can do something for her career.”

  Kate caught my eye. “Then we should be fine.”

  “I’m surprised we didn’t smell her before we saw her,” Carol Ann said, laughing when she saw my expression. “She seems to bathe in Shalimar perfume.”

  I turned to look at the woman with flaming-red hair and a brightly colored chiffon dress as she wove her way through the lobby. True to Carol Ann’s warning, the smell of the heavy perfume reached us before she did.

  “Is that a cigarette holder in her hand?” Richard asked.

  Carol Ann gasped. “She can’t smoke in here.”

  “It’s worse,” Kate said. “She’s vaping.”

  Sasha reached us and took a deep drag on her long white cigarette holder but no smoke emerged. “We’re finally here.”

  “We?” Dahlia asked, glancing at her clipboard.

  “Didn’t I mention that I was bringing my new associate?” Sasha’s voice was raspy and revealed the fact that she’d probably smoked real cigarettes for years before switching to electric ones. She turned and beckoned to someone.

  “Is that . . .?” Fern said, his voice dying on his lips.

  Richard shook his head. “Impossible.”

  “You keep using that word,” Kate said to him.

  I watched the man in the mango-colored shirt stride toward us. I would recognize that sneer anywhere. “It’s Jeremy Johns all right.”

  Chapter 3

  “Of course I’m positive it was him,” I said into my cell phone as I stepped into my suite, slipping off my black flats and leaving them in the marble foyer. “If you remember, Jeremy Johns has a distinctive personality.”

  “I remember him and his personality,” Detective Mike Reese said on the other end of the phone. “I’m just shocked he turned up halfway around the world at the same resort as you.”

  I padded into the bedroom in my bare feet and flopped back on the bed. The white duvet puffed up around me as I sank into the pillow top mattress. I let out a sigh of pleasure. It felt heavenly to lie down after hours sitting in an economy class plane seat and wonderful to hear the detective’s deep voice. Even though I’d technically added an international plan to my cell service to keep in touch with our brides, my first phone call had been to Mike.

  “Annabelle? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here. I just laid down on the bed for a moment.”

  “I wish I was there with you.”

  I felt myself blush even though I was alone in the room. DC police detective Mike Reese and I had been involved in what Kate claimed was the slowest-moving relationship she’d ever witnessed. I couldn’t deny that it had taken a bit longer than usual for us to reach the point where we were actually dating. It hadn’t been clear to me at first that the detective liked me, and it had taken him a while to actually ask me out. On top of that, as a wedding planner and detective, we both had erratic schedules, so making and keeping dates had been tricky at times. But we’d finally gotten our acts together and had been officially seeing each other for a couple of months. I wasn’t sure if we were ready to go away together, even if I had been allowed to bring a guest on the FAM trip. We hadn’t even slept over at each other’s apartments yet. Not that it wouldn’t be nice to share my suite with the tall, dark, and handsome detective.

  “Bali is beautiful, but you would not have wanted to be on that fifteen-hour leg of the flight from New York to Taipei,” I said.

  He laughed. “Probably not. But I still miss you.”

  “I miss you,” I told him. And I did. The detective’s dark, wavy hair and hazel eyes that deepened to green when he looked at me made my knees go weak. And after seeing him without a shirt, I was positive he was not a cop with a doughnut habit. No one could have muscles like that and eat Krispy Kremes on a regular basis. I tried to put his physique out of my mind, but even hearing his deep voice on the phone made my heart beat a bit faster. “I’ll be home in a week.”

  “It seems like a long way to go for a week.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but it’s a great opportunity for us to get to know some of the biggest names in the wedding business.”

  “Like Jeremy Johns?”

  I rolled onto my stomach and sat up on my elbows. “Ugh. Don’t remind me.”

  “Tell me again how he managed to score himself an invite on such an exclusive trip. I thought his reputation was ruined after the stunts he pulled during your yacht wedding.”

  “You would think so, right? I know his name is mud in Washington, but maybe not everyone in New York got the memo. He seems to have sweet-talked his way into assisting one of the planners there.” I sat up and looked at the clock on the bedside table. I had half an hour before I needed to be dressed and downstairs for the welcome dinner.

  “Was he surprised to see you?”

  “You could say that.” I thought back to the disgraced designer’s face when he’d recognized me then had spotted Kate, Richard, and Fern. His eyes had grown wide, and the color had drained from his face, although his fake smile had never wavered. “He pretended not to know us, and I had to kick Richard in the shin to keep him from saying something.”

  “Why not tell everyone what you know about the guy?” Reese asked.

  I pushed myself off the bed and switched my cell phone to my other ear. “Because then I’d have to tell everyone the details surrounding his bad behavior, and I’d rather not have everyone on this trip calling me the wedding planner of death.”

  “People don’t really call you that, do they?” He sounded like he was trying not to laugh.

  I stepped into the walk-in closet and ran my hand along the dresses I’d hung up earlier. “Not to my face, but I know people find it strange that Kate and I have wound up in the middle of so many murder investigations.”

  “Lucky for me that you have such bad luck or we’d never have met.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from grinning as I plucked a peacock-blue cocktail dress from the rack. “True. That’s one happy by-product of my clients getting killed.”

  “And you’re sure this Jeremy Johns character isn’t dangerous?” Reese asked, always the cop.

  “I’m pretty sure.” I walked out of the closet and draped the dress across the bed. “He’s more of a weasel than a threat.”

  “Is that Annabelle?” I heard a voice that wasn’t Mike’s in the background.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and started pulling off my pants with one hand. “Who was that? Where are you?”

  “I’m at your building. You did ask me to water your ficus tree, remember?”

  “Is that Leatrice?” I unbuttoned my shirt and dropped it on the bed then walked into the bathroom and pulled the white terry cloth bathrobe from the hook next to the shower. I glanced out the far glass wall as I slipped on the bathrobe and felt grateful that the tall palm trees blocked people at the pool from having a clear view into my suite.

  Reese sighed. “She wants to talk to you.”

  “I kind of need to get ready—“

  “Thank heavens, Annabelle.” Leatrice’s voice sounded out of breath. “I’ve been so worried.”

  “I’ve only been gone two days, Leatrice. And I’m fine. I’m staying at a very nice resort, so you don’t have anything to worry about.” My elderly downstairs neighbor had taken an active interest in me since I’d moved in to my Georgetown apartment building six years ago, adding meddling in my personal life to her list of hobbies, which included watching crime TV, listening to her police scanner, and wearing eccentric clothes. She was like a matchmaker, neurotic mother, and head of the neighborhood watch all rolled into one pint-sized, wrinkly package.

  Leatrice gave a half snort, half laugh. “Luxury resorts are exactly where they look for people to kidnap and sell into white slavery.”

  I felt my eyebrows pop up. “You think someone’s going to sell me into white slavery?”

  “You and Kate,” she said
. “You’re both young and pretty. You’re the perfect candidates.”

  “Have you been watching late-night TV again?”

  “Law & Order. And you know those shows are based on true stories.”

  I heard a knock on my door and walked to the foyer as I tied the belt on my bathrobe. “What have we said about you watching true crime shows?”

  Leatrice muttered some protests and explanations on the other end of the phone as I opened the door. Richard stood in the hallway wearing a perfectly tailored and pressed tan suit with a hot-pink shirt underneath. His eyes widened when he saw me still in a bathrobe. I waved him inside the room.

  “We need to be downstairs in fifteen minutes,” Richard whispered as he tapped his Gucci watch. “Why are you not dressed yet?”

  I pushed the mute button on my phone and held it away from my ear. “I was telling Reese I’d arrived safely, and then Leatrice got on the line.”

  “Leatrice?” He gestured for me to hand him the phone. “I need to check on Hermes.”

  I passed the phone to him. “I still can’t believe you let Leatrice watch your dog. I thought you were terrified she’d end up dressing him in weird sweaters and funny hats.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she’ll dress him up in an array of God-awful costumes, but I didn’t have a choice. P.J. had to go out of town for a conference. The only other people I’d trust are on this trip with me, so Leatrice was my last resort.”

  “Don’t let her hear that,” I said. “She’d be crushed to find out she isn’t one of your best friends.”

  Richard unmuted the phone. “Leatrice? It’s Richard. Yes, we’re fine. Annabelle’s fine.” He paused and gave me a funny look. “Of course I’ll make sure she doesn’t get kidnapped by international sex traffickers. It’s at the top of my list.”

  I shook my head and walked toward the bathroom where I’d already set my makeup out on the marble counter. I could hear Richard assuring Leatrice as I pulled the elastic tie out of my hair and flipped it over. I didn’t have time to wash and dry my hair, but I could freshen it up. I groped along the counter for my travel-sized baby powder and shook some into the back of my hair. I ran my hands vigorously through my hair and flipped it back up. I shook a bit more powder into my hairline then brushed it out. My previously limp auburn hair fluffed out around my shoulders. Much better, I thought. You’d never know that it hadn’t been washed in nearly forty-eight hours.