“You can make fun of me all you want, but I think she’s going to try. And just maybe succeed. She succeeded with Dad.”
“But why? Marrying you off gets you out of her hair. She doesn’t collect on some big insurance policy on your life, does she?”
“No, but—”
“She doesn’t have to kill you to get the house. And a murder at the wedding probably wouldn’t endear her to that producer or director you say she wants to impress. So why—”
“Maybe a murder would endear her to the producer. That’s the kind of stuff Hollywood loves! Read it in the tabloids: Star of new Steffan Productions drama confronts tragedy in personal life! Beloved stepdaughter murdered at her own wedding! Michelle heartbroken!” Pam gave one of her scornful snorts. “The house is peanuts. With me dead before I’m actually married or turn twenty-three, she gets everything. The whole trust fund goes to her. So look for it to happen before the guy says ‘I now pronounce you husband and wife,’ so Sterling can’t have some claim on it.”
“That’s how your father set it up?” I asked, dismayed.
“He did it right after he and Michelle were married, before he lost all that money on the land deal. He was trying to be fair and protect both of us, I guess.”
And practically drawing a diagram for murder to anyone so inclined. Which, if Pam was right, Michelle definitely was.
“But she’s spending all this trust fund money on the wedding. She wouldn’t do that if she intended to grab it for herself.”
“That’s why she’s doing it. Don’t you see? Because whoever investigates the murder . . . my murder . . . will look at it exactly like you’re doing. But it’s really just a big fat smokescreen.”
Uneasily I realized there was a certain sinister logic to that.
“There’ll be plenty left in the trust fund, even after everything she’s spending on the wedding?”
“I don’t know how much, but I’m sure it will supplement her lifestyle nicely.”
“Pam, if you really do believe you’re in danger, then you have to stop the wedding immediately.”
“Then you think she could try to do it at the wedding?”
“No, I don’t mean that—”
“Then you think I’m perfectly safe.”
“Well . . . umm . . .” Not necessarily that either.
She crossed her arms again and regarded me like a judge waiting for the defendant to plead one way or the other. I wavered on a needle point of indecision. Michelle was obviously ambitious, given the new fitness center she had going and her hope of reviving a movie career. She had a definite flair for the expensive and ostentatious. If Pam were right, Michelle had married for money, not love—money enhanced with a big insurance payoff when her husband died. But that didn’t mean she’d murder for more money. Or even that she’d murdered her husband.
Those bees probably had just flown in through the window. Bees do things like that. Michelle surely couldn’t now hope to pull off a murder with a tent full of wedding guests as witnesses.
Although, if she could somehow figure a devious enough way to do it, all those guests would provide a fantastic alibi. . .
“You’d better be thinking about yourself too,” Pam warned. “I doubt she’d object to an extra victim who happens to get in the way. Maybe she’s planning to booby-trap the limo with a bomb that’ll blow us both sky high right before the ceremony.”
That pushed me off the needle of indecision and into the camp of this-is-ridiculous. “But Michelle is going to be in the limo with us. Remember? You’re supposed to arrive at the tent together so she can walk down the aisle with you to give you away.”
Pam scowled as if she’d forgotten that detail, but she was not deterred. “She’ll think of something.”
I threw up my hands. “Why not go whole-hog and plant a bomb to blow up everyone in the tent? If extra deaths don’t matter, why not spew poison gas out of the fog machine? Do a mass poisoning at the dinner?”
“You won’t be laughing when you’re lying there dead,” she warned in an ominous tone.
Which would have been more effective if I hadn’t had this vision of myself sprawled on the grass clutching a purloined lobster tail seasoned with arsenic, and thinking, as I ricocheted off into eternity, How about that? Pam was right after all.
“If you’re so worried about all this, why don’t you just hire a couple of muscular bodyguards for protection?”
The question was more facetious than serious, but Pam pounced on it. “Michelle isn’t going to do some dumb thing like a shooting or stabbing that a bodyguard could protect me from. It’ll be more subtle. Sneaky.”
Subtle and sneaky would be the way to go, all right. But what was more likely was that this girl was seriously paranoid.
“What would work best is if we can get the police on to her before the wedding. Look, I have an idea.”
An idea. Just what we needed. Hadn’t someone’s great idea started everything from Silly Putty to the atom bomb?
“We don’t go to the detective empty-handed. There are yellow jackets around now. I’ll go out in the morning and trap some, just like you said. I’ll even open the jar on my arm when we’re with him and let them sting me, so he can see how it was done. I’m not allergic,” she added.
“That sounds a little melodramatic.” To say nothing of painful. “Kind of Perry Mason-ish.”
“The dramatic courtroom crisis works for him on all those old reruns. I’d like a dramatic crisis before I’m dead and Michelle’s on trial for murdering me.”
“Pam, I’m sorry, but this is all just too . . . far out. Thinking Michelle killed your father, and now she’s going to kill you too. . . .” I shook my head.
“So you definitely won’t go to the detective?”
“I’m not saying I absolutely wouldn’t ever do it, but the evidence would have to be a lot more convincing than it is now.”
“Like me dead in my $24,000 wedding gown?”
Shock over the price momentarily derailed me. “Your gown cost twenty-four-thousand?”
“I think that includes the veil, but probably not the tiara with diamond chips. No overpriced wedding is complete without a diamond tiara.”
I dropped the subject of the wedding gown and went back to what was more important here. “Pam, this isn’t even a cold case about your father’s death. It’s a never-was case. As for Michelle trying to kill you . . . Has she ever said or done anything threatening?”
“She sent me clear across the country to school. I was really scared.”
I didn’t respond, and she tried again.
“She got me to take horseback riding lessons down in California. The horse spooked, and I fell off and broke a toe. And I almost choked on chips loaded with some strange spice that she gave me once.”
I still didn’t say anything, but I suppose my expression was comment enough.
“Basically what you think is that I’m a certifiable nut case, right? Paranoid. Delusional. Yada, yada.”
“I think you’re stressed and having subconscious doubts about the wedding, but—”
“Okay, then, just to make certain you have no doubts about my being a gen-u-ine, brand-name nut case, try this on for size: I think Michelle may have killed my mother too.”
“Your mother! Oh, Pam, come on. You’re saying she has some murderous vendetta against your entire family?”
“No, not a vendetta. It’s just that one by one we’ve stood in the way of something she wants, so she . . . gets us out of the way.”
“Why would she want to get rid of your mother?”
“So she could grab Dad, of course. All the while pretending she was Mom’s good friend.”
I couldn’t help a melodramatic sigh. “So how did she do it?”
“Mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when she was crossing a street in LA. They never figured out who did it.”
I didn’t know what to say. It was all wildly possible, but as fantastic as some superspy movie.
A James Bond terrorist working the Mom-and-Dad circuit.
“Never mind. I knew you wouldn’t believe me.” She opened the door and slid out of the limo.
I leaned across the center console to peer at her, concerned about her leaving in this agitated condition. “Where are you going?”
“I think I’ll just dash on home and demand something really outrageous for the wedding. I haven’t been doing my share. Release of a thousand doves, maybe? No, that’s too mundane. I know—a thousand vultures!”
“Pam—”
“And maybe I should arrive in some more unique way. A limousine is so yesterday.” She lifted her head to look down her nose, as if the limo were an oversized cockroach. “How about a hot-air balloon, or parachuting out of a plane? Michelle can arrange to have it shot down or blown up, and then I’ll really go out with a bang.”
Pam dashed to the Bug. She couldn’t do an effective burn of rubber with the old vehicle, but she did determinedly chug-chug away.
***
I went inside shaking my head. Overwrought was putting it mildly. Pam was an explosion waiting to detonate, with imagination enough for a dozen episodes of Ed Montrose, P.I.E. I’d call her in the morning, I decided. Or maybe I should call Michelle. Not that I’d list all Pam’s wild accusations, but maybe I could say enough to convince Michelle that it would be in Pam’s best interests to postpone the wedding.
I wished I could talk to Fitz, but it was almost eleven thirty now. Not that he’d mind my calling at a late hour, but he and his son shared a cabin on the Miss Nora, and the ringing of the cell phone might disturb Matt. Who, ever since Fitz and I solved that murder together, seems to look on me as an overage Mata Hari leading his father astray.
By morning, I figured Pam would complain to Michelle and I’d be getting a call telling me I was off the job. No call came, so just before noon I called the house and asked for Pam and then Michelle, but neither was available. The housekeeper wouldn’t give out private cell phone numbers for either of them.
I called to chat with Sarah in Florida, but didn’t mention my five-day gig in case it still fell through. She was excited about the upcoming start of classes, and granddaughter Rachel had gotten over her snit about her mother enrolling in the same university.
The Miss Nora returned to the Vigland marina Monday afternoon. That evening Fitz brought over leftover clam chowder he’d made for guests on the boat, and I filled him in on what Pam had told me.
I figured he’d pass it off as paranoid or weird, but he seemed thoughtful, and the following evening when we went out to dinner he produced printouts of Gerald Gibson’s obituary and a short article from The Vigland Tides about the death. Fitz had been to the library and located both in their records system.
The article was bare-bones, saying basically what Pam had said, that an ambulance had been called to 2217 Hornsby Drive and Gerald Gibson was dead on arrival at Vigland Hospital from an allergic reaction to bee stings. The sleeping pills were not mentioned. The obituary listed no survivors other than Pam and Michelle.
The printouts lay on the table between us. We were at a restaurant called The Log Cabin eating crab cakes with a divine shrimp sauce. Fitz had started to regrow the mustache he’d had back in his Ed Montrose days and looked particularly dashing. I felt a bit dashing myself, with a fresh dose of Cinnamon Sunrise on my hair. With the addition of flattering candlelight it was an evening ripe for romance. The fact that we were more concerned with murder perhaps said something about our relationship. I picked up the two pieces of paper and studied them again.
“If it was murder, it was a successful murder,” Fitz commented. “As the daughter told you, there was no investigation.”
“Maybe, if what Pam says is true, two successful murders. And another one in the works.”
Fitz toyed with his coffee cup. “It’s frustrating, but at this point I don’t see any way we can investigate the mother’s death.”
I nodded. Too far distant in both miles and years. “Would there be any point in looking back at the medical examiner’s records on Gerald Gibson’s death? Or is that even possible?”
“I’m on good terms with a couple of police officers who were fans of my show. Hornsby Drive is outside the city limits, and they’re Vigland city police, but if it’s possible to look at those old records, one of them can probably do it. I’ll check on it.”
“More important at the moment is whether there’s anything to Pam’s suspicions that Michelle has murderous ideas about her.”
I’d vowed to give up sleuthing after we caught my old boyfriend’s murderer, and I wasn’t eager to jump in again. Not only had my limo been shot up in that adventure, my nerves hadn’t fared too well either. Also, catching one murderer does not make one an expert in the arena of criminal detection.
“For your own safety, you could just back out of the limo deal with Michelle,” Fitz suggested. He smiled wryly. “But we both know that isn’t going to happen.”
Right. Pam and I weren’t exactly good buddies here, but I didn’t want anything happening to her. She seemed so vulnerably alone.
After dinner we took a stroll along the city park walkway bordering Vigland Bay. A nearly full moon lit the smooth water with a pathway of silver that looked solid enough to dance on, and in the distance Mt. Rainier floated dreamily on a layer of clouds. Even an old TV detective and an amateur sleuth couldn’t concentrate on murder in such circumstances. Romance interrupted, including a kiss under the shadows of an old maple.
A very satisfactory interruption.
But back at my duplex, Fitz was in detective mode again.
“Keep your eyes and ears open while you’re at the house. Snoop. Ask questions. And be careful. If there is anything to this, the stepmother may not mind some collateral damage. Which could be you.”
***
A couple days later, hoping to convince her to at least postpone the wedding, I finally reached Pam on the phone.
“I was just wondering if you’re . . . umm . . . okay,” I said.
“Mentally stable, you mean? Not standing on street corners shouting out crazed accusations? Not dashing around the park waving a jar of raw meat at any passing yellow jacket?”
“Pam, I—”
“Never mind. I’m fine. You’ll have to pardon my outburst the other night. As you said, I’m nervous and stressed out.”
But she sounded cool and calm now, nerveless as a brick.
“You’re planning to go ahead with it, then.”
“The wedding? Of course.”
I wondered about doves . . . or vultures . . . but I decided not to ask. “I really think you should reconsider it. You could go back to Dartmouth for another year or two—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Sterling and I are going to be very happy. My mystery novel is coming along nicely. And, as I said, if I decide I need further education, I can go to UCLA or somewhere.”
Levelheaded plans, mature and sensible. But . . . “You’re not worried about the wedding now?”
“I have a few concerns, of course. Getting married is a major step in anyone’s life. But Sterling and I are going to be very happy.”
Did she think if she said it often enough, she could make it come true?
She hung up without saying good-bye. I debated calling Michelle, but even if I could persuade her to postpone the wedding, I was sure Pam would insist on going through with it. She had a stubborn streak, and it had definitely been activated. I wondered if she’d ever confided her suspicions about Michelle to the groom-to-be.
***
The next couple of weeks were busy. The limousine business perked along nicely. A couple of weddings . . . nice, ordinary ones. An anniversary party for an older couple, several trips to the Sea-Tac airport, one trip to the Seattle dock to pick up a family returning from an Alaskan cruise, a three-couple, on-the-road pizza party, and several businessmen trips into Olympia and Seattle. I was accustomed to male clients who took advantage of travel time in the limo to
use an electric shaver or laptop, but one of these guys actually took off his shoes and trimmed his toenails. You meet all kinds in the limo business.
The young couple who’d been renting the other side of my duplex gave their thirty days' notice. I was sorry to see them go. They’d been in the duplex only since my good friend Joella moved out to take a job as a live-in nanny. But they’d found a house they wanted to buy, and I was glad for them even though I dreaded the whole process of finding another reliable tenant. I figured I’d wait until after Pam’s wedding to advertise.
Fitz and Matt went out on several more charter trips. In between, while they were docked at the marina, Fitz fixed a leak on my garage roof. We went to a local theater production of Pride and Prejudice and cooked together at my place or went out to dinner. I even got him to go to church with me one Sunday. His new mustache was coming along nicely. I was beginning to think I might need something more potent than Cinnamon Sunrise on my hair.
I was still hoping Pam would decide to call the wedding off, but when I hadn’t heard anything by a couple days before I was supposed to show up, I called Michelle. I didn’t want to turn down other business and then find there’d been a change of plans. She confirmed that she still wanted the limo for five days.
So on the morning of Tuesday the twenty-first, chauffeur’s uniforms freshly dry-cleaned, suitcase tucked into the trunk of the limo, gas tank filled, and newly cut and painted circles of duct tape pasted over the bullet holes, I showed up for duty.
Chapter Six
Michelle met me on the front steps with cell phone clamped to her ear, blue eyes sparking with fury.
“What do you mean you can’t make it? You’re a groomsman!” A few more angry words and then she punched the disconnect button without a good-bye. “Can you believe this? Three days before the wedding, and he backs out. Now I’m going to have one bridesmaid dangling along behind alone, like a dead fish on a line.”
A problem, perhaps, but I was guiltily relieved that it apparently took Michelle’s mind off the blackness of the limo. She supplied me with a remote control to open the gate, and we dashed out to the casino complex south of town. She’d booked a block of rooms at their elegant Tschimikan Inn, where I found myself drafted as notetaker while she inspected each room. After a couple of picky-point complaints to the management, we were off to the florist’s to pick out fresh flowers for each room. No expense spared, of course. Pam’s money.
Here Comes the Ride Page 4