by Laura Durham
I laughed. It was hard to imagine the two massive leather-clad men doing anything incognito.
“Come on.” I motioned to Richard with my head. “Let’s find our seats.”
Mack pointed out which of the long tables was Lovebirds, and we walked across the lawn, me on my toes so my heels wouldn’t sink into the grass. I bent low to read the place cards in the low light.
“I need a flashlight,” I said, bending over one of the modern white chairs.
“Here I am,” Richard called from the other side of the table.
I squinted at a name. “And this is me.”
A man with a closely cropped dark beard smiled up at me from the chair next to mine. “G’day. It looks like we’re dinner mates.”
I couldn’t help noticing what bright blue eyes he had. I pulled out my chair and sat down next to him. “I’m Annabelle. From Washington, DC.”
“Alan. From Australia.” He held out a hand. “Can you believe this setup?”
“It’s pretty amazing.” I looked down at the long menu card resting on top of the pearl-beaded dinner plate. A sprig of fresh rice fronds was wrapped in a green ribbon and draped across the menu card.
Alan picked up his menu card. “It looks like there are seven or eight courses.”
My mouth dropped open as I inspected my own menu card. The traditional Indonesian food sounded delicious, but eight courses was a long time to sit near Jeremy Johns. Not that I’d seen him yet.
“Have you ever eaten pickled snake fruit?” Alan whispered to me.
“I’m okay with it as long as it isn’t pickled snake,” I said.
He laughed. “Don’t be so sure. I haven’t read the entire menu yet.”
“How on earth do they expect us to read these in the dark?” The loud voice behind me made me jump. I didn’t need to turn around to know it was Sasha. Her perfume preceded her. Plus, no one else in the group was as loud or from Long Island.
I patted the seat next to me with some reluctance. “You’re next to me.”
“Amy, right?” she asked as she took her seat beside me, her flowing dress ballooning out around her.
“Actually it’s Annabelle.” I put my napkin over my mouth so I could breath through the cloud of heavy perfume lingering over her.
“Close enough,” she said with a dismissive wave.
Alan raised an eyebrow at me and made a face. I pressed my fingers to my mouth to keep from laughing.
“Where is my assistant?” Sasha asked to no one in particular, craning her neck to scan the tables.
“Has he worked for you for long?” I asked, knowing very well that he couldn’t have, but wanting to discover more information about how Jeremy Johns had landed on his feet and on Sasha’s payroll.
Sasha gave a curt shake of her head. “Only a couple of months. He came to New York after working in Paris.”
“Really?” I said. I couldn’t help but be impressed by the scope of Jeremy’s deception. If he’d been in Paris, it had only been because he’d been on the run from the last client he’d bilked out of money. “How did you manage to snag him?”
“He wanted to work with me.” She smiled and swept her unnaturally bright-red hair off her shoulder. “He says he only works with the best.”
I nodded. That sounded like Jeremy Johns. Pander to the egos of older women and watch them fawn all over you.
Alan nudged me and made a gagging motion with his hands. “I think you and I need a drink. Want to hit the bar?”
I stood up. “Excuse us, won’t you?” I said to Sasha as Jeremy approached the table.
I ran a few steps to catch up to Alan. “Just in the nick of time.”
Alan looked over his shoulder. “Is that the crawler she was talking about?”
“Crawler?” I asked, wondering if I’d heard correctly.
He laughed. “Australian for someone trying to get in good with someone else.”
I glanced back at Sasha and Jeremy. It was clear she was scolding him for being late as he took the seat next to her. I couldn’t help smiling at the strained expression on his face. “Then that’s a perfect word for Jeremy.”
“If you ask me, he looks like a wanker.” Alan grabbed my hand. “If we have to sit next to those two, we’re going to need some serious cocktails.”
I didn’t know if it was the Australian accent or the fact that he’d already saved me from Sasha and Jeremy, but this guy was fast becoming my favorite person on the trip.
We crossed the lawn to the bar set up in the corner. A man and woman already stood leaning against the illuminated Lucite bar.
The woman had fluffy, blond hair and wore a long multicolored-striped dress with spaghetti straps. The man was equally blond with short hair and wore black pants and a black shirt open at the throat. Both were tanned and talked like they knew each other well.
“You two look like you need a drink,” the woman said with a big smile.
“You could say that,” Alan said. “We’re sitting next to a scary lady.”
The man in black looked over our shoulders. “Which one?”
I hesitated to say her name for fear that these two knew her or, worse yet, were friends with her.
“Sasha,” Alan said. “The New Yorker with the purple hair.”
The blonde rolled her eyes. “She’s one of the reasons I’m glad we live in LA.”
I snapped my fingers. “I think you met my assistant, Kate, during cocktails.”
The man grinned. “We loved her. Where is she sitting?”
I looked back at the giant X-shaped table but couldn’t see Kate. “At Sweetheart, wherever that may be.”
“I’m Kristina and this is Brett.” The blonde handed me a martini glass filled with a clear liquid as the bartender passed it to her. “And you need to try this drink.”
I took the drink and sipped it. It was strong but not overly sweet.
“Isn’t is good?” Kristina asked. “None of that fruity nonsense. I like a cocktail with clean, simple flavors.”
Brett passed an identical drink to Alan then took two more from the bartender and raised his glass in the air. “To new friends and avoiding scary people.”
We all clinked our glasses then drank.
“I cannot believe you left me there,” Richard said as he hurried up to us. “With them.”
I made introductions. Richard managed to shake hands all around.
Brett handed Richard a drink. “We’re toasting to avoiding scary people.”
“Cheers to that.” Richard tossed back the cocktail in one gulp.
“We didn’t mean to leave you,” I explained.
Richard set the empty martini glass on the top of the bar. “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘abandon.’”
Before I could mollify Richard, Dina and Veronica walked up. Veronica wobbled the last few steps, and I wondered how many colorful cocktails she’d already enjoyed.
“It looks like the party’s at the bar,” Dina said.
Kristina held up two fingers to the bartender. “Two more, please.” She turned back to the two women. “You must try this drink.”
“It’s simple and clean,” Brett said. “Just the way Kristina likes it.”
Kristina swatted at him. “Are you making fun of my cocktail?”
Brett took the two filled martini glasses from the bartender and passed them to Richard who handed them to Dina and Veronica. “Never. You know I think you have exquisite taste.”
Veronica splashed some of the drink onto her hand as she tried to hold it steady. “Between the fruity drinks during cocktail hour and the pregaming we did at the bar with Carol Ann and her team, I’m feeling a little dizzy.”
“Don’t forget we haven’t eaten in hours,” Dina said. “Once you get food in you, you’ll feel better.”
“What’s everyone doing over here?” Carol Ann ran up in her very high heels. “The first course is being served.”
“Sorry, sweetie,” Alan said, putting his empty glass bac
k on the bar. “We’ll go sit down right away.”
Veronica and Dina teetered off, clutching each other with one hand and holding their drinks with the other.
“Talk to you later.” Kristina gave me a small wave as she and Brett headed across the lawn.
Alan linked arms with Richard and me, pulling us toward our table. “Let’s go eat some snake fruit.”
I took my seat next to Sasha again.
“Where were you?” she asked, giving me the once-over.
I noticed that Jeremy Johns wasn’t sitting on the other side of her anymore. “What happened to your assistant?”
“I had him go get me a pashmina.” Sasha flipped her hair back. “No one told me we’d be sitting outside for hours.”
I wondered what part of “dinner in the garden” had confused her, but I kept my mouth shut. I found the air to be balmy and the slight breeze to be pleasant. Before I could think of a new topic of conversation, I heard a scream from across the lawn. I twisted around in my chair and spotted Dina standing and shrieking.
“What’s going on?” Alan asked.
A murmur passed through the crowd as people began standing and hurrying over to Dina. I pushed back from the table. “No idea, but she seems hysterical.”
Alan rose next to me. “I’ll go see what’s happening.”
As he left the table, Richard came around the table and slid into his chair. “I don’t have a good feeling about this, Annabelle.”
I rubbed my arms briskly despite the fact that the air wasn’t cold. “Maybe she saw a snake. They have snakes in Bali, right?”
I watched several men wearing black jackets and hotel name badges rush across the lawn. Carol Ann stood next to Dina, her arms wrapped around her. My snake story seemed less and less likely.
Alan returned to the table and stood behind Richard. I looked up at his face and noticed that his mouth was set in a grim line.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, even though I knew in my gut it wasn’t.
He shook his head. “That girl Veronica collapsed and isn’t breathing.”
“But we just saw her at the bar,” I said. “She looked fine.”
“Well, they’re doing CPR on her,” Alan said.
Kate hurried up to us with Fern close on her heels. “Can you believe this?”
Fern’s eyes were wide. “I saw it happen. She did not look good before she went down.”
Richard reached out and grasped my hand. Goosebumps pricked my arms as my stomach clenched. I knew Richard was thinking the same thing I was. Not again.
Chapter 6
Kate lowered her sunglasses over her eyes as we rode the golf cart up the curved driveway the next morning. “What kind of taskmasters serve breakfast at eight o’clock?”
“Eight in the morning is not an unreasonable time for breakfast,” I said, hanging onto the side of the cart as we swung up to the entrance to another of the resort’s buildings. Like the section of the resort that housed our guest suites, this building was expansive and open with wide marble steps leading to a massive lobby with more neutral-colored furniture and blond wood. “What’s unreasonable is our bride Natalie calling me at four in the morning.”
Kate shook her head. “Neurotic Natalie called you at four a.m.?”
I flipped my ponytail off my shoulder. “To be fair, it was four p.m. her time, and I didn’t expect our brides to memorize the time difference.”
“It’s exactly twelve hours different. All you need to do is switch the a.m. to p.m. in your head or vice versa,” Kate said. “Easy peasy.”
I didn’t remind her that I was the one who’d drilled that into her head before we left. “Well, it wasn’t easy peasy to give Natalie a coherent answer about flower girl sashes at four in the morning, I can tell you that much.”
“Is she still going on about those?” Kate asked. “Did you tell her she should go with the blue and move on?”
“You know I did. Let’s hope hearing it for the tenth time will do the trick.” I stifled a yawn. “Eight a.m. really wouldn’t be so early if I hadn’t had the wake-up call four hours earlier.”
“It’s still early if you were up late being questioned by the police.” Richard hopped out of the back of the golf cart once it had come to a stop and held out a hand to me as I stepped down.
I took his hand and used the other hand to keep my knee-length purple sheath dress from riding up. I took a deep breath, enjoying the fresh morning air and breathing in the scent of frangipani blossoms from a nearby arrangement.
“Not to mention jet-lagged,” Fern moaned. “My body thinks it’s eight o’clock at night not eight in the morning.”
Kate patted him on the shoulder. “Join the club.”
“Do we take naps in the club?” Fern asked. “I could really go for a nap.”
“Listen,” I said as we walked up the steps. “If we can power through today, our bodies should start to reset themselves to Bali time.”
“I’m not sure we need to power through today so much as survive it,” Kate said as she leaned on Fern’s arm, her high-heel mules clacking on the cream-colored marble tiles. “You do remember that one of our colleagues died last night?”
I’d tried to push the mental image out of my mind, but the sight of the blond planner sprawled on the lawn, her eyes lifeless and her lips purple, was not one I’d forget anytime soon. “Of course I do.” I lowered my voice as we walked through the lobby on our way to the cafe. “But the police don’t know what caused her to die. It could have been accidental. Some people get fatal blood clots after long flights.”
Richard eyed me. “You’re reaching.”
I looked up at the large, star-shaped skylight in the ceiling as we passed underneath. A spiraling yellow-and-white art installation hung from above, and natural light poured in from the wooden slats lining the glass. “I refuse to believe that she was murdered.”
Kate looked at me over her sunglasses. “Because that would make us the angels of death?”
I glanced at a woman sitting in a royal-blue armchair and hoped she hadn’t heard what Kate said. “No, and I don’t want anyone on the trip to find out anything about our past run-ins with dead bodies either.”
“You don’t need to worry about us spilling the beans, Annabelle.” Fern pantomimed locking his lips and throwing away the key.
“But we aren’t the only people who know.” Richard led the way as we walked down the twisting staircase to the promenade level.
I thought about Jeremy Johns and my heart sank. He wouldn’t hesitate for a second to tell everyone within shouting distance about the deaths that had taken place when we’d worked together.
We reached the promenade level and crossed to the entrance to a glass-walled dining room. A coffee bar was set up outside the tall doors with two Balinese baristas in white jackets standing behind a pair of shiny cappuccino machines. I could almost taste the rich coffee on my tongue as I breathed in the aroma.
“Thank heavens,” Kate said when she saw the chalkboard propped next to the bar listing the coffee drinks available. “I don’t think I’ve ever needed coffee as much in my life.”
Fern leaned against the coffee bar and batted his eyelashes at the baristas. “A double espresso, and give it wings.”
“Can you order me a cappuccino?” I asked Richard as I spotted Alan standing with Brett and Kristina.
“There you are,” Alan said, giving me a quick hug when I joined the group. “We wondered if you and your mates had slept late. We’re all knackered after last night.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t easy rousing everyone, but we’re here.”
“Dina hasn’t come down yet,” Kristina said. She wore a black halter top and white jeans, and her pale hair fell loose around her shoulders. Somehow she managed to make a simple outfit look very hip. I figured it must be a trick people from LA knew, because Brett wore a plain green T-shirt and khaki shorts and still looked like he stepped out of the pages of GQ.
“Do yo
u think she will?” Brett asked.
“Maybe she’s at the gym.” Kristina took a sip of her coffee. “She was always at the gym early during Inspire. That’s another reason I didn’t hang out with her.”
Kate shuddered. “I don’t know if I’d make breakfast if my friend had died. And I definitely wouldn’t hit the gym.”
“She didn’t just drop dead,” Alan said. “She was murdered.”
“Murdered?” I stared at him, glad that some of his words weren’t Australian slang. “Who said she was murdered?”
“I heard the police talking to hotel security last night after they questioned me. They think it looks suspicious.”
“They said something about poison.”
I shook my head as if trying to dismiss the idea. “But they haven’t had time to run a tox report or test food for poison.”
Alan raised an eyebrow at me. “Maybe her external symptoms point to poison? That’s why they took all her plates and glassware to be tested. To find out how it got into her system.”
“Are you okay?” Kristina asked, putting a hand on my bare arm. “You look a little pale.”
“Did you know Veronica well?” Brett asked.
“No,” I said. “It’s just shocking to hear she might have been murdered. She seemed nice.”
Kristina looked at Brett. “She was pretty nice. We knew her from Inspire. She and Dina always came together.”
I glanced at the growing group of people around me and noticed a line extending from the coffee bar. “It seems like most of the people here know each other from Inspire.”
Alan ran a hand along his short beard. “I haven’t been, but I hear it’s stellar.”
“I think everyone here either knows Carol Ann through Inspire or knows Cliff and Ted from Insider Weddings magazine,” Brett said.
A waiter in a black Nehru jacket passed by and invited us into the glassed dining room for breakfast. I turned and spotted Richard heading for me with two cappuccino cups.
“Just in time,” I said, taking one of the white porcelain cups with a heart pattern swirled into the white foam on top.