“Calm down, Dree.” Owen Winter came up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s let these people do their job. It’s good to see you, Carrie, though I’m sorry it’s under these circumstances.”
Owen’s pale blue eyes were cold, and just as I’d told Lily, he seemed angry beneath his calm demeanor. Something about the clench of his jaw, and the way his lips would suddenly tighten, just didn’t match his amiable words.
The fog in my brain had cleared by now, and if anything my perceptions were turned up almost painfully high. The five of us made an odd tableau there on the veranda, and I took in several things simultaneously.
My mother’s expression, soft and glowing, as she looked at Owen. Adrienne’s instant deferral to her father, coupled with a poisonous glance at me. The fact that Owen had shed some weight since I saw him last and was looking taut and sporty in slacks and a black knit shirt with a designer logo on the pocket. Also, from the corner of my eye, Deputy Austin drawing himself up as if coming to attention, to give Owen a respectful nod that felt like a salute.
Then the tableau shifted and I was following the deputy up to Guy’s rooms. A young technician in latex gloves and paper slippers stopped me from going inside, so I stood in the doorway to make my survey.
“It all looks pretty much the same,” I said. “Those piles of paper on the desk were there yesterday, and that’s the shirt he put on . . .”
Guy’s Hawaiian shirt was draped innocuously over the same chair, but the sight of it brought on a vision of his red shirt, stiff with blood, and I swayed on my feet.
“I-I need to sit down.” I pushed past the deputy—it was like stepping around a stone wall—and into my own bedroom, where I slumped onto the edge of the bed. “Sorry, I’m just—”
“You’re just in shock,” he said kindly, squatting in front of me. He smelled nice, like soap. “Take your time. I won’t ask you about Price’s friends on the island, since you just got here, but did he get any phone calls yesterday that you know of? Kimmie said that his going out after dinner seemed like a last-minute decision. We need to know who he was meeting.”
I shook my head, and then my conscience pricked. I couldn’t quite bring myself to confess the snooping I’d done in Guy’s absence, but I had to say something. “He might have gotten an e-mail, I suppose.”
“We checked the PC downstairs. Nothing.”
“No, I mean on this little e-mail gadget he loaned me.”
Austin frowned and stood up. “What gadget?”
I described the gray plastic e-mailer. “It’s in his desk drawer.”
“Not this morning it isn’t.” The leather-covered notebook reappeared. “What size was it? Brand? Wireless, or with a cable? Did you see any messages on the screen? Any names?”
“Well . . .” I was blushing, but at this point the deputy had zero interest in my inappropriate behavior. He pressed me for the exact words I’d read, but my memory was sketchy as well as guilty. I told him what I could. “. . . and the last one was Ann-something, just an initial. AnnJ, that was it. I’m sorry, that’s all I remember.”
He nodded, all business now, and handed me his card. “If you remember anything more, anything at all, day or night, you call me and report it. Is that clear?”
“Absolutely.”
But when I did remember something more, and did report it, the result was anything but absolutely clear.
Chapter Ten
The rest of Monday passed in a haze of unreality. The police came and went, the phone rang constantly, and I couldn’t concentrate on anything for more than five minutes at a time. It was depressing to be alone and irritating to be with anyone else, and I had the feeling that my mother and the Winters felt the same way.
In the end I took a long nap in my room, but all that did was make it hard to sleep later that night, after a dispiriting evening spent staring at a book without seeing the words.
Tuesday morning was better. Mom and I both awoke early, and after a quick consultation we were dressed and driving off in my SUV. I thought of it now as Scarlet the Harlot, the gas-guzzling slut. My white van in Seattle is Vanna White. I can’t help it.
Mom wanted to run some errands and give the Winters some time alone this morning—and also, no doubt, to grill me about Aaron. What I wanted, with indecent urgency, was to have breakfast without Adrienne and Kimberly around.
And I knew just the man to make it for me: ZZ Nickles, the barbecue chef who’d be cooking Lily’s wedding supper. He was expecting me this morning, and I was quite grateful to have something, anything, to occupy my mind.
Mom was pensive on the drive to Friday Harbor. Somewhere around the winery she ventured, “Caretakers must be odd people, don’t you think? Unusual, I mean.”
“How so?”
She chose her words carefully. “To have no roots. To apply for a job and a home at the same time, as if they don’t have a separate life.”
I thought about all those e-mails. “I think Guy had a life. We just don’t know much about it. He said you were marvelous, you know. He called you a breath of fresh air.”
“Isn’t that sweet! I’ll have to thank—”
She remembered that Guy wasn’t around to thank anymore, and groped in her purse for a tissue. By the time I pulled into town we were both dabbing our eyes.
The streets of Friday Harbor run steeply down to the water, and the water carries as much traffic as the streets. The harbor is a deep and sheltered anchorage, embraced by a thickly forested point of land on one side and an equally forested island on the other, with the green coastline of Shaw Island visible in between.
With the weekend over, the pleasure-boat marina was a thicket of masts. They glittered in the sun, as white as birch trees, punctuated here and there by flower baskets hanging from the marina’s lampposts. A stout green and white state ferry was just chugging away from its dock, and farther out a seaplane dropped from the pale blue sky to the deep blue water like a glinting dragonfly.
It was all very bustling and gay, and just what Mom and I needed.
Parking in Friday Harbor is tighter than jeans from the dryer, but we were in luck. As I turned left on First Street a van full of teenagers was just pulling away from our destination, a neat little brick building whose scalloped red awning proclaimed ZZ NICKLES! WORLD-CLASS BBQ!
I took their space and got out, noting that the building’s back deck overhung the slope to the harbor. Excellent—our wedding party would have a nice outdoor dimension to it. But even more excellent, at least for now, was the card in the window bearing those three little words that every old-fashioned girl longs for: Breakfast All Day.
ZZ Nickles was an old friend of Lily’s father from when her family lived in New Orleans, and he’d jumped at the chance to serve up the wedding feast. I’d been looking forward to meeting him ever since I heard his honeyed, good-humored voice on the telephone. No one had ever called me Sugar Pie before.
Lily remembered him, barely, as a big laughing man who dubbed her Cupcake and her brother Jelly Baby. His ribs were legendary—the ones he cooked, not his own personal ribs—and his secret sauce, according to him, was celebrated on three continents. ZZ didn’t say which three, but who cared?
“It’s the wedding lady!”
The man himself came out to the sidewalk to escort us into his establishment. Somewhere between sixty and eighty, ZZ had the look of a big man who’d shrunk with age, with skin black as midnight and close-shorn hair as white as the spotless white apron he sported. His eyes were a warm golden brown under heavy lids, and his teeth showed large and yellowed as he grinned.
“Made in Heaven Wedding Design!” he caroled. “Elegant Weddings with an Original Flair! I read your whole Web site, Sugar Pie, and you are just as elegantly original as your business. And this fine lady must be your mama.”
Mom smiled gallantly, putting tears aside. “How did you know, Mr. Nickles?”
“Why, your daughter is fortunate enough to resemble you, of course.
But don’t mister me, please! I’m ZZ to my friends, and since I’ve never met a stranger, I’m ZZ to everybody. Now, come in, come in!”
He ushered us into the restaurant, whose interior was as warm and embracing as its namesake. Red vinyl booths lined the pine plank walls, with black-and-white photos of old New Orleans scenes hanging above them. The round tables in the middle, also of pine, were half-filled this morning with a mix of tourists and locals, and heavenly scents wafted from the kitchen.
Heaven was present in more ways than one. Various plaques bearing Bible verses were scattered among the photographs, and there was a Christian fish symbol on the cash register by the door.
Once we’d settled into a cozy corner, ZZ opened his arms to pat us each lightly on the shoulder.
“I heard about the terrible crime out your way. It’s a shocking thing, shocking. But the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.”
Then the grin emerged again, like the sun from clouds. “But did you bring me even a little bitty appetite? My new cook just pulled some biscuits out of the oven, and there’s huckleberry jam that my granddaughter Peggy made with her own two hands. I’ll be insulted right down to the bone if you don’t try it.”
“Coffee?” I said hopefully.
“Of course, coffee! Where is my brain this morning? Let’s get you all taken care of, and then when you’re good and ready we’ll talk about that little Cupcake’s wedding.”
ZZ summoned our waitress, and soon I was ordering eggs and biscuits while my mother sipped cautiously from a steaming mug. Mom usually packs a jar of instant coffee in her purse to doctor whatever brew she’s served—a practice that has mortified me since adolescence. But the jar had been left behind today, and she looked up in surprise from her sipping.
“I can’t believe it,” she whispered. “It tastes like proper coffee!”
“Hell freezes over,” I announced. “Film at eleven.”
She ignored the jibe and asked the question I’d been dreading. “Now tell me, is Aaron coming to the wedding or not? You said his doctor might not allow it, but if his arm is healing, then why can’t he travel?”
I shifted on the red vinyl. The unrelenting doctor was a face-saving invention of mine, and I’d come to regret him. “I’m not quite sure. But there’s still a week to go.”
“Five days,” she said. “And last-minute flights are so expensive, you would think Aaron would want to—”
“Mom, he’ll come if he’s coming, all right?”
She tsked. “Don’t snap, dear. You’re still upset from yesterday, aren’t you? You’ll feel better once you have something to eat.”
I’ll feel better once I know for sure whether Aaron’s dumping me, I thought, but it was easier to agree. We made a little small talk, about the restaurant and the island and her visit with Owen so far. But inevitably, though reluctantly, we speculated about the events of Sunday night.
“The house was dark when Owen and I got back,” Mom explained. “We assumed everyone was asleep. And Kimmie and Dree are both heavy sleepers, so they didn’t hear Guy drive back, or go out again. Did you?”
“I’m not really sure,” I said thoughtfully. I was remembering those tapping footsteps. Were they a dream, or not? “So neither of the sisters was walking around the house that night?”
“No, why?”
“Just curious. Have you gotten to know them very well, Mom?” I tried to be diplomatically neutral, like Switzerland. “They seem a little . . .”
“Hostile?” She chuckled. “Carrie, dear, don’t look so shocked. I can see through false courtesy just as well as you can. Dree and Kimmie are just so irritated that I’m around!”
“It’s not just you. Adrienne tried to frighten me to death.” I abandoned diplomacy and told her about the scare tactics in the airplane. “I’m going to pay her back for that one.”
“You don’t mean that. Retaliating wouldn’t make you feel one bit better.”
“I do mean it! Getting her back would make me feel great, I just don’t know how yet. But seriously, I am sorry they’re not being friendlier to you.”
“Don’t be.” She took a healthy swallow of her nondoctored coffee. “I’m in love with Owen, not his girls.”
“In love?” It was disconcerting to hear the phrase from my mother’s lips, but nice to see the youthful flush that it brought to her cheeks. “If Adrienne heard you say that she’d bar the door. She looked so ferocious when—”
I broke off, my fork in midair and my mouth agape.
“What is it, Carrie? Can’t you breathe? Should I do that Heimlich business?”
“I’m fine,” I said faintly. “I just remembered something. . . .”
Something explosive. The idea of barring the door had called up a mental picture of Adrienne Winter on the veranda this morning, her arms folded. In the picture—I was sure of this—Darling Dree’s left wrist was showing. And on that wrist she wore the diamond-dusted watch I’d seen Sunday, right next to Guy Price’s bed.
Chapter Eleven
“Where’s your pretty mama, Sugar Pie?”
I looked up, startled. Mom had gone off on her errands, leaving me to brood over this new development—which I hadn’t told her about. As ZZ doffed his apron and settled into the booth across from me, I took a deep breath and put on a smile.
“She had things to do,” I told him. “But she loved your coffee, and she’s not easy to please.”
“That’s the chicory, makes it real roasty tasting. Your mama’s got taste. I always say, you can spoil the best meal in the world with a bad cup of coffee . . .”
He went on talking, but I was so preoccupied that I hardly heard him. Uncomfortable thoughts were still unreeling across my mind like the crawl on a TV screen.
Guy Price and Adrienne? Not Kimmie? Then what was all that needling he gave Dree at dinner? And could she possibly have followed him to the mausoleum and . . . no, of course not. That was ridiculous. Or was it?
ZZ fell silent, looking at me expectantly, and I realized that he must have asked me a question.
“I’m sorry?”
“I said, is your mama very upset about this dreadful murder?”
“She’ll be all right. But it’s sad about Guy, isn’t it? He was a charming man.”
ZZ made a sound like a growl. “Appearances are deceiving, young lady.”
Well now, I thought, what have we here? This was the kind of chilly reaction that I’d seen with the Nyquists. Intrigued, I tried to probe a bit further.
“You have to admit,” I said, “Guy’s appearance was remarkably handsome.”
The chef’s expression grew wrathful, and one gnarled old hand made a fist on the table.
“He was as a whited sepulchre, which indeed appears beautiful outward, but is within full of dead men’s bones and of all uncleanness!”
Whoa. Hard to get happy after that. I said uncertainly, “I take it you didn’t get along?”
ZZ looked away, withdrawing his hand, and I could see the effort he made to regain his composure. “I don’t get along with sinners. I don’t get along with men who pollute the souls of young people with drugs.”
“Guy Price was a drug dealer? Do you know that for sure?”
He sighed heavily and turned his heavy-lidded gaze back to me. “Maybe not for sure. But it doesn’t matter now, does it?”
“I guess not.” I fumbled with my paperwork. “Well, shall we get started? You said on e-mail you had a question about the wedding cake . . .”
“Yes, indeed,” said ZZ. We both relaxed a bit as the Old Testament patriarch morphed back into the modern-day chef. “I know you already ordered it from Sutherland’s, and they make real fine cakes. But my granddaughter Peggy has been kind of apprenticing with them, and I’d take it as a favor if you’d allow her to make this one and then take photographs for her portfolio. They said they’d need your permission.”
Lily had chosen a three-layer cake flavored with vanilla beans and lavender sugar, and a relatively si
mple white-on-white frosting design. Nothing too ambitious for an apprentice.
“I don’t see why not,” I said, “as long as the bakery guarantees the results. But I’d like to talk with Peggy first.”
“Course you would. Hey there, Peggy girl!”
ZZ waved to one of the waitresses, an elfin young woman of about nineteen who had just finished serving an all-male table across the room. The fellows were laughing and teasing her, but she was giving as good as she got.
“Pretty as a princess, isn’t she?” said the proud grandpa, as the girl made her way to our booth. “But I’ve told her time and again, she needs to stop that flirting.”
“She’s lovely, ZZ.”
I wasn’t just being polite. If ZZ had black-coffee skin, Peggy’s was a creamy café au lait, and the eyes in her heart-shaped face were large and luminous, hardly needing the heavy makeup that she wore. ZZ introduced us, and when I shook her slender little hand her grip was surprisingly strong.
“I understand you’d like to make Lily James’s wedding cake,” I said.
Peggy nodded eagerly as she slipped into the seat beside me. Her sultry perfume was as heavy as her makeup, and I drew back a bit. Nineteen going on thirty-five.
“I’d do a really good job for you,” she said, in a high-pitched but confident voice. “I’ve taken community college courses in bakery and pastry work, and Mrs. Sutherland says I’ve got a natural talent.”
As the girl elaborated on her qualifications, ZZ beamed at her proudly, and I was soon nodding in agreement.
“You’ve got the job, Peggy,” I told her. “Sigrid will have some lavender flowers set aside to decorate the platter. Can you pick them up from her on Saturday or early Sunday morning?”
“One of us will, for sure,” said ZZ. “’Scuse me a minute, I see a customer I need to say howdy to. You girls finish up and I’ll be right back.”
You May Now Kill the Bride Page 6