I shrugged. “It’s my business.”
“So she asked you to plan her wedding. Was she happy about this secret engagement? Any anger at Talbot for keeping it secret?”
“She seemed fine with it, as far as I could tell. She was kind of . . . excitable.”
“Excitable. What was she excited about?” Graham’s tired brown eyes were expressionless, but I could sense the active intelligence behind them as he weighed my words.
“Well, about Talbot’s running for mayor, and about their wedding. She was very insistent that I agree to work for her. She even gave me some cash as a deposit.”
This brought both eyebrows up. “Cash? How much cash?”
“I don’t really know. I didn’t want to take it out and count it during the party, and then after I found her I forgot all about it. It’s still in the pocket of my costume.”
Another sigh. First the ring, now this. I was definitely flunking Witness 101. “Ms. Kincaid, we’ll need to take the money in as evidence. You’ll be given a receipt. All right?”
“Of course.” But still, she meant to hire me. She meant to be my bride.
“Let’s go back to Mr. Barry. Tell me again what he said.”
I shifted in my chair. Wicker’s not that comfortable. “Tommy said ‘Stop it.’ I think he said that twice. And then he said ‘You’re killing her!’ ”
“So he believed that you had killed Ms. Montoya?”
“Is that what he told you? Lieutenant, Tommy couldn’t even focus his eyes at that point, he was dead drunk! I think he must have been repeating something he’d said earlier, during the murder.”
“And yet if he had spoken out earlier, the killer would hardly have left him alive as a witness.”
“Well, maybe he didn’t say it out loud, except later, to me, only he didn’t know it was me, he was just raving! Look, I know you’re supposed to be cagey about testimony, but please tell me, who did Tommy see? Did he recognize the murderer?”
Graham stood up. “We’d very much like to know that ourselves. Unfortunately, after leaving the crime scene, Mr. Barry drove his car into a concrete abutment under the Alaskan Way Viaduct. He’s currently in intensive care at Harborview. In a coma.”
May the Best
Man Die
on sale now
Carnegie Kincaid plans weddings, not stag parties. When a client asks Carnegie to manage a pre-wedding blow-out—complete with a stripper—she tactfully refuses the job. So why is Carnegie peering through binoculars across the Seattle Ship Canal, watching a shapely Santa Claus turn naked inside a hip dockside bistro?
Because her own significant other—with whom she is having some significant differences—is at the party too. And so, it turns out, is a killer . . .
THE MINUTE I PUT DOWN THE PHONE, I GRABBED THE BINOCULARS and focused on the Hot Spot for a second look. Not that I cared whether Aaron was inside. Not that I cared about Aaron at all.
Not that I could see him, either. Santa had left the lighted window, and the revelers milled aimlessly inside, as if the party were winding down. I spotted Mr. Garlic, but no one else familiar—until a flurry of movement drew my attention to the grassy slope below the deck.
There in the silvery frost and the tilted shadows, two long-limbed figures were struggling together, dodging and flailing in clumsy counterpoint. I had no trouble recognizing them as the best man and Lily’s baby brother. Jason Kraye was obviously drunk; maybe Darwin was the designated driver, trying to take his car keys away?
But you don’t punch people to get their car keys, I thought. And then, Maybe you do, if you’re young and male. It was hard to tell if this was a ritual scuffle—elk clashing their antlers—or a serious fight. Either way, I can’t say it bothered me to see the supercilious Jason getting knocked around a little.
The third figure was less ambiguous: Frank Sanjek, the bridegroom, was kneeling on the grass near the two combatants and vomiting hideously, his head jerking and lolling. Another male ritual. I smiled ruefully. Time for me to go home.
But once I went downstairs and gathered up my things, a nagging doubt stopped me from walking out the door. I had assured Lily that her brother was fine, and now he was apparently in the middle of a fistfight. Shouldn’t I check on the outcome?
For that matter, shouldn’t I make sure that the amiable, sensible bridegroom wasn’t unconscious and abandoned by his drunken friends, out in the freezing night? Eddie tells me I fuss too much about our clients, and maybe it’s true. But I was eager to see Sally Tyler walk down the aisle and out of my life on New Year’s Eve, and to that end, I needed Frank Sanjek safe and sound.
So I dashed up to the storeroom, hurried over to the worktable, and raised the binoculars to my eyes for the third and last time.
There was even less to see than before. Some of the café’s windows had gone dark, making it hard to get a clear view into the shrubbery. But at least Frank was on his feet; I watched him stagger to the sliding door and wrench it open. I didn’t spot Darwin, or Jason either, but they might have already left.
The stripper was just leaving, striding briskly up the sidewalk, head up and shoulders back after a job well done. And someone else was working his way down through the bushes toward the bike path, but I couldn’t make out his face, or whether he had a bicycle waiting for him. The guys were supposed to take cabs or buses home instead of driving, but even a bike could be dangerous—
“Bird-watching?”
I jumped, and Eddie’s binoculars slipped from my suddenly clumsy fingers, to land in the silver punch bowl with an enormous and resounding gonnng.
I was shocked, and not just because a man had suddenly materialized in the doorway. I was shocked by who it was. Aaron Gold.
“No birds at night,” he said, shaking his head sagely. A lock of hair flopped down into his eyes. “I know! S’ Christmas. You’re gonna find out who’s naughty or nice. Merry Christmas, Stretch.”
I stood with my back to the reverberating punch bowl and took a deep, shaky breath. I didn’t know how long Aaron had been watching me, or whether he guessed that I’d been spying on Santa’s striptease earlier. I also didn’t know how I felt about him, after the last few weeks of angry silence and unwilling tears.
And what neither of us knew, and wouldn’t learn until the next day, was this: of the three young men I had observed on the grass behind the Hot Spot Café, only two were still alive.
Death Takes a
Honeymoon
on sale now
Wedding planner Carnegie Kincaid can feel the heat when she reunites with an old flame in Sun Valley. But with a star-studded ceremony to pull off Carnegie has no time for carnal urges—especially once murder joins the party. The victim was a local hero who leapt from planes to fight fire. But was his impromptu skydive a smoke screen for something sinister? It’s up to Carnegie to grill the guests and unmask the killer . . . or watch her glitzy job go up in flames.
AS THE GROUP DISPERSED, WITH AL ISSUING CURT BUT EVEN-tempered orders, Aaron paused to give me a quick kiss. At least he meant it to be quick, but I held on to his arms.
“Are you insane?” I said, keeping my voice down. “Do you know how fast a fire can travel uphill? This is a crazy idea—”
“This was your idea, Stretch,” he said mildly. “And I’m going.”
“It’s too dangerous,” I pleaded. “Don’t go. I mean it. Don’t.”
“Carnegie, listen.” It struck me for the first time that Aaron only used my proper name during his rare solemn moments. “Remember what I told you before, that firefighting is like war? I’ve never been in a war, and nobody ever should, and I hope to God I never will be. But this is my chance, don’t you see? My chance to do something, I don’t know, something good. I have to do this.”
“Your chance to get killed, you mean.” I held on tighter. We were alone now by the steps, smoke stinging our eyes. “Don’t be a fool, Aaron. Don’t do this.”
He cocked his head. “So you don’t mind if Ja
ck Packard goes?” he said.
“Of course not! I mean, I do, but it’s his job. It’s not yours, and I want you safe.”
“That’s nice to hear.” His smile was still lopsided. “Now let me go, Stretch. See you soon, I promise.”
He got in the Jeep. Jack kissed Tracy through the window and drove them away. I watched them go, streaming with tears, until the road was empty.
And then, galumphing up the empty road toward me, came the only creature in the world who could end my weeping at a moment like this.
“Gorka! Oh, Gorka, you dear idiot. Come here, boy,”
And come he did, his rope leash flying as he tore up the hill at full speed. He had something clamped in his huge drooling jaws as usual, and as usual he dropped his trophy at my feet and barked in triumph.
I had to wipe the tears away to see properly, but even then I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Gorka’s trophy, covered in ashes and soot, was pale gray and roughly spherical, the size of a stone you could hold in your two cupped hands. But stones don’t have eye sockets, or a gaping darkness where a nose had once been, or a few teeth still attached to what remained of the upper jaw. There was another, smaller hole on one side, and I thought I knew what had caused it. In fact the only thing that kept me from fainting in horror was curiosity about whether I was right.
If I was right, Gorka’s trophy was a human skull with a bullet hole through the temple.
YOU MAY NOW KILL THE BRIDE
A Dell Book / February 2006
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2006 by Deborah Wessell
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-440-33577-1
v3.0
You May Now Kill the Bride Page 25