Dolled Up to Die

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Dolled Up to Die Page 9

by Lorena McCourtney


  “Oh yes. They have an incredible event planned, don’t they? She’s an amazing woman, so focused and creative.”

  Amazing, focused, and creative were perhaps the complimentary terms for a big spender in the wedding world? Cate didn’t voice that thought however. She just murmured, “Yes, isn’t she?”

  LeAnne led the way upstairs, chattering all the way about the facilities, her high heels clicking on the hardwood floors. She took Cate through the dressing rooms and the wedding area, once a ballroom, now called the Chapel Room. It had folding room dividers that could be closed to create an intimate area for a few guests, or left open to accommodate ever larger crowds. LeAnne showed her the one room Mr. Kieferson had completed as a display in his plan to turn the closed-off area into luxury rooms and suites. Before going back downstairs, Cate interrupted to ask a question.

  “A guy left the office just before I came in. I was wondering who he is?” Suddenly aware that might sound as if she were some desperate bridesmaid hungry to snap up any stray man, she added, “I thought he looked familiar, but I can’t quite place him.”

  Which was true, she realized. There was something vaguely familiar about the big, dark-haired guy.

  “Rolf Wildrider.” LeAnne wrinkled her nose as if the name put a bad taste in her mouth. “The vineyard manager. He lives in a cottage out back. Thinks he’s God’s gift to women, if you know what I mean.” She softened the snarky comment with a laugh.

  A “gift” Rolf Wildrider probably used with considerable success, Cate suspected. Was that his real name? Somehow it had an invented sound about it. He wouldn’t earn any points for a sophisticated approach, but a certain bold charm and rugged good looks perhaps made up for that.

  “Another reason I’m here,” Cate went on, “is that we understand the owner, Mr. Kieferson, passed away a few days ago. We’re wondering if that will mean any changes or complications with the scheduled weddings.”

  “Oh no, I’m certain everything will transition quite smoothly.” LeAnne paused. “Of course, there are always a few complications when there’s a death.” Another hesitation. “But I’m sure everything will be straightened out soon. Within a few days at most. Not that there are any problems; it’s just … well, everyone is very upset by Mr. K’s death.”

  What had begun as a reassuring statement had progressed into something closer to an admission of rising panic. LeAnne blinked as if she might be squeezing back tears.

  “There doesn’t seem to be much going on in the vineyard,” Cate suggested. “Are there any problems there?”

  “I don’t pay much attention to what goes on out in the vineyard. We operate independently.”

  “Has Rolf Wildrider been working at the vineyard long?”

  “Just a few months. I never could understand why Mr. K even hired Rolf. Except that he—”

  Cate thought the woman was going to say something more derogative about the vineyard manager, but then she broke off and gave a kind of strangled sob. “I still have a hard time believing he’s … gone. He was such a generous man. So sweet and softhearted and compassionate and caring.”

  For a moment Cate spotted definite signs of a crush on her boss, but LeAnne’s voice hardened when she added, “At least he was until …”

  Cate waited, hoping the “until” was going somewhere, but LeAnne briskly started down the stairs. “Mr. K was planning a complete kitchen staff here eventually, but right now everything but drinks come from the restaurant. The chef at Mr. K’s is fantastic, and so the reception dinners here are fantastic too.”

  “You’ve worked here at Lodge Hill for a long time?”

  “I was a hostess at the restaurant, and Mr. K was generous enough to give me a try as manager here. It’s worked out great. This was just a big old building going to ruin until he bought and restored it. He had such far-reaching, creative imagination.” By now they’d reached the bottom of the stairs. “Mrs. Kieferson—Jo-Jo, not Kim, the current Mrs. Kieferson—was managing the wedding business here at Lodge Hill then, and she was a wonderful help to me.”

  LeAnne’s words about Ed Kieferson were approving, but Cate heard a past tense in them that wasn’t necessarily connected with his death.

  “Did Mr. Kieferson exhibit some, oh, recent changes?” Cate asked cautiously. “Something that might have a connection with his death?”

  “His dumping Jo-Jo and latching on to the blonde bimbo was certainly a change!” LeAnne clapped a hand over her mouth and looked around as if she hoped some mouth other than her own had spoken those words. She cleared her throat and tapped her chest. “You must excuse me. I’m just so upset that I hardly know what I’m saying.”

  Yes, LeAnne definitely had some ambivalent feelings about her recently deceased boss.

  “Will you be staying on?” Cate asked.

  LeAnne jerked, as if the question startled her. Because she was thinking about leaving, and she was surprised someone might suspect that? Or was she thinking a mother-daughter conspiracy between Kim and Celeste might have her on a to-be-fired list?

  “I assume I’ll be staying,” LeAnne finally said. “I love dealing with excited brides and helping them make memories for a lifetime.”

  They finished the tour by going through the kitchen, for which there was a separate entrance, and then the downstairs Reception Room.

  Back in the office, LeAnne handed her a brochure. “Maybe you’ll want to use our services yourself sometime soon.” Before Cate could say there was no wedding in her foreseeable future, LeAnne jumped into an enthusiastic spiel. “You can, like Robyn, handle everything yourself, although we have marvelous packages in all price ranges. Personal attention and service are our specialty here at Lodge Hill. I’m personally present at every wedding.”

  Cate assumed you had to provide the bridegroom yourself, although maybe briskly capable LeAnne could do that too. But what she said was, “Mr. Kieferson’s death … It’s just so puzzling, don’t you think? Who would want to kill such a wonderful man?”

  “Yes, very puzzling.”

  No information there. “Did the police talk to you?”

  “Oh yes. They asked about everything from the last time I’d seen Mr. K to financial records and what I knew about Rolf Wildrider.”

  “Did they talk to him too?”

  “I would assume so, though I don’t really know. He was in here today only because he wanted to know about Mr. K’s services.”

  Cate wanted to know more about Rolf, but the earlier words “financial records” jumped out at her. She repeated them. “Financial records?”

  “I couldn’t help the authorities there, of course. I turn everything over to the accountant who handles all Mr. K’s business affairs.” LeAnne dismissed finances with a wave of hand. “I just hope they don’t pin Mr. K’s murder on Jo-Jo. She’s such a sweet woman. But it was odd, his death happening there at her house.”

  A thought about LeAnne’s quick detour from the subject of finances occurred to Cate. Could LeAnne have a lucrative side business as an embezzler? If Mr. K had found out, maybe she’d had to get rid of him before her crime was exposed? Or maybe the accountant was embezzling money and he had to get rid of Mr. K to avoid exposure?

  Uncle Joe always said you had to be suspicious of everyone, but it was confusing when ever-more suspects seemed to be popping out of the woodwork here.

  Cate jumped back to an earlier trail LeAnne had opened up about Ed Kieferson dumping Jo-Jo for his current wife. She lowered her voice to a confidential level. “I understand the divorce was a rather messy situation.”

  “Yes, very messy. Actually, I thought Mr. K might eventually come to his senses and go back to Jo-Jo.” A frown line cut between LeAnne’s nicely groomed brows. “Not that I’d have gone back to him if I were her.”

  Was it possible Eddie had “come to his senses” and wanted out of the marriage so he could go back to Jo-Jo? And Celeste wasn’t about to let that happen?

  10

  Cate was backing her car
around the car parked next to her Honda, thinking about all LeAnne had said, when an unexpected connection popped into her head.

  Rolf Wildrider, vineyard manager. Big. Muscular. Dark-haired. A bike rider.

  Another big, dark-haired, muscular guy, the one coming into the Mystic Mirage as she barged out. With a motorcycle sitting at the curb.

  She hadn’t seen him clearly that day. She’d been too flustered, too distracted and embarrassed. But there was a definite resemblance.

  Had Rolf recognized her today from that previous meeting? Although he’d been flirty, she hadn’t noted any sign of recognition. She had the impression, there on the walkway, that he figured he was, as LeAnne had put it, “God’s gift to women,” and it was his duty to bestow a passing gift on her.

  But Rolf Wildrider may not have been in a flirty frame of mind that day at the Mystic Mirage. Why was he there? Hoping to see Kim and offer the beautiful widow some solicitous comfort?

  Although his presence there could have been totally innocent. Kim was actually his employer now. Or maybe he knew, with Ed Kieferson dead, that Celeste would really be the person in control and he’d gone to see her, checking on his job security?

  On impulse, Cate took the narrow gravel road that circled around back of the Lodge Hill building. The steep-roofed cottage was only a hundred yards or so from the main building, although a line of evergreens probably obscured view of it from inside the lodge itself. A motorcycle was parked out front. She didn’t know much about motorcycles, but, as she got closer, it didn’t take any expertise to see that the bike had those same high handlebars she’d almost run into outside the Mystic Mirage. Two more motorcycles stood in a carport attached to the house. They were partially dismantled, and bike parts littered the dirt floor, as if this might be a spare-time repair project for Rolf.

  She would, she decided, ask Mitch to put his computer skills to work on Rolf Wildrider.

  Cate picked Jo-Jo up twenty minutes before the scheduled start of Eddie’s service. Ever practical, even if she was coming into a half million dollars, Jo-Jo had bought a black suit suitable for the occasion but not so funeral-ish that it wouldn’t be appropriate for other occasions.

  “You look beautiful,” Cate told her honestly. Jo-Jo had also had her hair done, and the frisky gray curls gave her face a youthful uplift. “Eddie would be proud of you.”

  Jo-Jo blinked and touched her eyes with the corner of a tissue. She gave Cate directions to the funeral home, where services for Donna’s husband had also been held only a year ago.

  A considerable crowd filled the flower-laden room. The coffin up front was closed, and brilliant red, spiky-looking flowers that Cate couldn’t identify covered it from end to end.

  “I wonder why they chose those strange flowers?” Jo-Jo whispered. “Eddie liked roses. Yellow ones especially.”

  Cate and Jo-Jo slipped into a pew near the rear of the room. Cate didn’t see either Kim or Celeste, but Jo-Jo nodded toward a curtained-off area and whispered that was where she and Donna had sat for Donna’s husband’s funeral. If Eddie’s grown son was present, he was also behind the curtain, because Jo-Jo couldn’t spot him. Cate wondered if she should be including him on her list of suspects. No sign of Rolf Wildrider.

  Cate hadn’t really expected to pick up any useful information at the funeral, which was fortunate, because she didn’t see or hear anything helpful. But, for Jo-Jo’s sake, she was glad she’d come.

  After taking Jo-Jo home, Cate decided she’d take advantage of the time for some PI work she’d been thinking might be helpful.

  Jo-Jo’s rural house was in a dip between two hills, and no other houses were visible from it. Cate drove on by and, from the top of the next hill, spotted a single-wide trailer and several houses. The trailer was closest to Jo-Jo’s place. Cate pulled into the driveway.

  A hound that looked big enough to drag her away and bury her like an old bone bounded out to meet her. Cate, half-in, half-out of the car, started to jump all the way back in, but then she noted the dog’s tail was wagging enthusiastically. She tentatively put out a hand, and the dog licked it.

  “Okay, you want to take me to your leader?”

  The dog bounded back toward the trailer. Cate heard unidentifiable thunks and clunks coming from around behind it, and she was suddenly aware how vulnerably alone she was out here. Mitch would think this was a terrible idea …

  Then a yell came from the far side of the trailer. “Yo! I’m around here.”

  Cate cautiously circled the end of the trailer. A middle-aged man with gray hair and a droopy mustache stood thigh-deep in a ditch with a shovel in his hand. A pile of fresh dirt lined the far side of the ditch. Cate’s first macabre thought was that he was digging a grave.

  “Septic line’s got a break in it.” He swiped a grimy sleeve across his sweaty forehead. “Gotta dig it up and replace it. If you’re sellin’ something, I ain’t buyin’.”

  Cate was relieved that she was wrong about the purpose of his digging. “I’m not selling anything. Actually, I’m looking for information about a neighbor.”

  “You from the sheriff’s department too?”

  “Someone from the sheriff’s department has been here?”

  “Oh yeah. Asking all kinds of questions about that guy got killed over there.” He jerked the shovel handle toward Jo-Jo’s place. “But I don’t know nothin’. I work nights at the mill and sleep days. Except today I have to dig up this fool septic line.”

  “Did you happen to hear the donkey bray that day?”

  “Deputies wanted to know that too. It could of brayed. I dunno. I was probably asleep if it did, and I wouldn’t of noticed if I was awake.”

  The questions the deputies asked about Maude meant they knew the donkey’s braying wasn’t random noise-making, that it announced someone was entering the property. So this wasn’t a fact she knew and they didn’t, something she could whip out as a clever clue to prove Jo-Jo’s innocence. It was a mildly deflating realization.

  “So you never drove by the place that day, never saw an unfamiliar vehicle there?”

  “Nope.”

  “How about a motorcycle?”

  “Might of heard one once. I don’t know that it was over there, though. Guy over on Dickens Road has a couple of ’em.”

  “Oh. Well, thanks anyway, then.”

  The hound gave her hand another friendly slurp as she headed back to the car. A maybe motorcycle. Not exactly a “gotcha” clue, but possibly a tie-in with Rolf Wildrider and the guy she’d bumped into at the Mystic Mirage. Who she was almost certain now were one and the same.

  The four other people Cate contacted on Randolph Road were equally unhelpful. A sheriff’s department investigator had already talked to all of them. No one had seen or heard anything unusual that day, and one woman drew herself up and said frostily, as if Cate had accused her of Peeping Tom activities, “I don’t snoop into what the neighbors are doing or who their visitors are.”

  Uncle Joe had once warned Cate that she might have to interview ten people to get one snippet of information. Today, both here and at the funeral, she’d encountered a fair percentage of that snippet-less number. But surely, sooner or later, if she persisted, she’d run into someone who knew something.

  That evening Cate looked up a phone number and called the woman whose name Mitch had given her as a former employee of the Mystic Mirage. Lola Makston was friendly and seemed willing to talk. She said she didn’t really know Mr. Kieferson, but he’d come into the Mystic Mirage several times, and she was shocked by the newspaper account of his death.

  “Did you ever notice any tension between Mr. Kieferson and his wife?”

  “Between him and Kim? No.” She paused and then amended that. “Well, maybe. I got the impression he really doted on her, but sometimes she seemed impatient with him. He was a lot older, you know.”

  “Did he get along okay with Celeste?”

  “Well, you know men and mother-in-laws.” Cate heard a shrug
in the woman’s voice, as if she spoke from experience. “Maybe it’s especially hard when your mother-in-law is younger than you.”

  “Did anything in particular happen?”

  “He came in once to take Kim to lunch, but she’d gone shopping somewhere and only Celeste was there. He and Celeste got in an argument about something, but I don’t know what.” Her laugh held a tinge of self-consciousness. “Ol’ nosy me, I wanted to listen in. But it was my lunch hour, and I couldn’t think of any reason to hang around without it being really obvious that I was listening in. He was gone by the time I got back.”

  “Did you like the job?”

  “It was okay, though I didn’t like having to act like I really believed all that tarot cards and past lives and astrology stuff. Kim wasn’t so hot and heavy on it herself, but Celeste … Actually, Celeste fired me.”

  “Really? For any particular reason?”

  “I didn’t know she was listening, of course, but I made the mistake of laughing when I was looking through her book. But c’mon, some guy ‘remembering’ he’d been Bigfoot in another life? Who wouldn’t laugh? But she fired me on the spot.”

  “Well, thanks. That’s interesting information. I appreciate your talking to me.” Cate decided to ask one more question before hanging up. “By the way, has anyone from the sheriff’s department contacted you?”

  “You said you were an investigator, didn’t you?” The woman sounded alarmed. “I thought that meant you were police.”

  “I’m a private investigator working for a client who is concerned about Mr. Kieferson’s death.” Diplomatically she added, “A client who is also concerned the police may not be doing enough to catch the killer.”

  “Oh, I guess that’s okay then. I’d certainly like to see the killer caught. There is one little thing, though I don’t suppose it had anything to do with Mr. Kieferson …”

  Cate offered quick encouragement. “Any little thing may be helpful.”

  “One time Celeste got a phone call, and she was—I don’t know quite how to put it—agitated, I guess you’d say, afterward.”

 

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