At least something I was fairly certain she hadn’t done.
“Someone said the chauffeur was the first person to reach the body. I should have realized right away that would be you.” He turned to Fitz. “You were there too?”
“No, I just arrived.”
“I called him,” I said. “For, uh, moral support.”
Detective Molino’s eyebrows twitched in a scowl, but he made no comment except to tell another officer to get someone on the gate. Michelle had arranged for it to stay open as guests were arriving.
“Uri Hubbard got there just a minute after I did,” I said to get the detective’s attention off Fitz’s presence. “He’s also the person who turned the fog machine off. I guess he probably told you that.”
I was wondering again how Uri knew how to do that. But it wasn’t necessarily a relevant point, I had to admit. Not everyone is as mechanically challenged as I am. Fitz too, for that matter. Between us, we’d probably starve to death on the typical desert island if all we had were canned goods and an unfamiliar can opener. Maybe the fog machine simply had a big valve labeled Off.
“You know Mr. Hubbard?” Detective Molino asked.
“I’ve never seen him before tonight. I understand he and his wife are were partners with Michelle in that new health club opening up downtown. You’ve probably seen the sign. The Change Your World Fitness Center.”
“Okay. Follow me,” Detective Molino ordered. “I’ll take your statement now, although we may need more information later.”
At least he didn’t seem to have me lined up as a possible suspect, as he had when old boyfriend Jerry was murdered. He turned and started back to the tent without looking to see if I followed.
Fitz’s presence wasn’t requested, but he followed too. At the tent opening, Detective Molino stopped and turned to face the milling crowd. He raised his voice and said, “We’ll start interviewing you individually now. No one is to leave the premises until you’ve been interviewed and released. Is that clear? No one leaves. For those of you from out of town, it may be necessary to detain you for a longer period of time while the investigation continues.”
“What kind of ‘period of time’?” Stan Steffan demanded. His dark glasses gleamed like big insect eyes in the light from the tent.
I didn’t see Mrs. Steffan. She’d looked sick in that fog.
“I have an important meeting in LA tomorrow night. We have a flight to catch in the morning.”
“So do we,” someone from the crowd yelled.
Detective Molino held up a hand. He wore a badge pinned to a plain khaki shirt. He’d been in uniform the first time I met him a few months ago, but apparently he’d gone plainclothes now. Those gotcha blue eyes hadn’t changed, however. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but you may be required to stay in the area while the investigation proceeds.”
“Actually, they can’t do that,” Fitz whispered. “They may try to make you think they can make you stay, but unless you’re actually under arrest, they can’t.”
Fitz knows lots of interesting facts about murder and criminal investigation, and, considering our conversation in the limo, knives as well. He’d done considerable research to be sure the facts were right on his TV show.
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” I whispered back, although I suspected Stan Steffan had a herd of lawyers back in LA who would clue him in quickly enough on what he could do. “Someone here did it. I want that person caught.”
“You have any suspects?” Fitz asked.
“Wasn’t it you who told me everyone’s a suspect?”
The deputies had blocked off the entrance to the tent with yellow crime-scene tape, and Detective Molino led me to the other section of tent that had been set up for the reception. His upheld hand told Fitz not to follow. Other officers were bringing people in to interview also, spacing us out at tables around the tent. He gave the ice sculpture a passing shot with his flashlight, and I was careful to give it space. The thing still looked like a menace, an iceberg waiting for the Titanic to float by.
I knew the questioning routine from past experience. Name, address, phone number, relationship to the victim, etc. This time, however, Detective Molino had upgraded to a laptop for his notes. Then came the first question actually relating to the murder: Why had I come back into the tent before anyone else?
“Because Pam had fears about her own safety during the ceremony, and I was afraid that in the fog someone might have . . . harmed her. So I went looking for her.”
“And Pam is?”
“Pamela Gibson, the bride.”
“Yes, of course. Stepdaughter of the victim. Would she be the next of kin?”
“I don’t know.” Technically, with Pam’s father dead, were she and Michelle kin of any kind? “I think the groom’s mother is a distant cousin of Michelle’s.”
“Did you find Ms. Gibson when you went looking for her?”
“No, she must have run out with everyone else. It was total chaos, with everyone yelling and shoving.”
“Why did she have fears about her safety?”
“It’s kind of complicated, but it had to do with her father’s death several years ago.” For the first time a startling possibility occurred to me. “Maybe the person really intended to kill Pam, but made a mistake in the fog and killed Michelle instead!”
His fingers paused on the keys. “Mistake?” he repeated. He tapped out something, enough keystrokes to spell the word. Then two more taps. Skeptical question marks after the word?
On second thought, mistake didn’t seem likely even to me. If someone was close enough to stick a knife in Michelle’s back, he could surely see, even in the fog, that his victim was wearing peach, not a white wedding gown.
“You didn’t see anyone around the body?”
“No. The tent was empty.” I paused. “Well, maybe Uri Hubbard was in there and I just didn’t see him. He showed up a minute later.”
Detective Molino asked a few more questions, but the interview was actually quite brief. Understandably so, with so many people to interview. I suspected the crowd was already getting restless. A kind of buzz, and once a shrill laugh, came from people milling around outside the tent. I asked Detective Molino a question before I left.
“Did you locate the fog machine operator?”
To which I received the not-unexpected chiding. “Now, Ms. McConnell, you know I can’t discuss such matters.”
Fitz and I headed back to the limo. I had a peculiar urge to start yanking flowers off it. It looked so foolishly frivolous in the midst of death. I’d have to get them off before long anyway. There were people who’d need transportation back to the inn.
Behind us, a ruckus started just outside the interview area, and I looked back to see meek little Phyllis Forsythe standing in front of her son, arms protectively outspread as she yelled, “No, you can’t do that. We want a lawyer!”
I watched, astonished, as she actually advanced on the deputy who was trying to talk to Sterling. She looked ready to pounce if the deputy made a wrong move. He took a step backward, but he also had a hand on the gun at his belt.
For a moment I thought this was going to turn into a strange mom vs. cop showdown, but Joe Forsythe suddenly appeared and grabbed his wife around the shoulders.
I couldn’t hear what he said to the officer, although I presumed it was something apologetic, but Phyllis was yelling back over her shoulder even as her husband led her away, and I could hear her plain enough.
“You lay a hand on my son, and I’ll have every lawyer in the state after you!”
Shirley the housekeeper suddenly ducked out of the crowd and rushed up to me. “Do you know where Pam is?”
“No, she ran off before the police arrived. Are they looking for her?” I was still watching Joe and Phyllis.
“I don’t know. They haven’t talked to me yet. What I’m thinking is, the caterers have all that food, and I don’t suppose any of these people have eaten, since they were expectin
g dinner at the reception. I’m wondering if we could just go ahead and feed everyone. They could do it buffet style. But Pam would have to tell them, I think, not me.”
Leave it to sensible cook Shirley to think of such a practical matter. In my world, people must be transported. In hers, people must be fed. Food might also serve to keep the crowd’s restlessness from escalating into full mutiny at being detained.
“But I don’t know,” she said, hesitating now, with a glance toward the tent. “Serving a meal, with the body still lying right there . . .”
“The medical examiner will probably be here soon and remove it.”
“Good.”
“And I think feeding these people is an excellent idea. I’ll see if I can find Pam. What in the world was going on with Sterling’s mother?”
“They were going to question him alone, like they’re doing everyone else, and she had a fit.”
The mouse turned tiger when she thought her cub . . . her oversized cub . . . was threatened? But why would she see his questioning as a threat?
Unless she thought he had something to do with the murder.
Oh, surely not. Pam might have a motive, but what motive could Sterling have? Besides, he’d dashed out of the tent so fast he hadn’t even had time to connect his cell phone to his ear, no doubt a first for him. No time to commit a murder.
Yet his mother surely knew him better than anyone else. . .
There were no chairs outside the tent, but Joe had helped Phyllis to a place on the grass well away from the light. He crouched beside her, obviously trying to soothe her. I thought briefly of going over to see if I could do something, but Shirley was saying something more about finding Pam.
I didn’t know what had happened to Sterling, but he was nowhere in sight now. The right kind of almost-a-groom would be with Pam, but I doubted that Sterling was.
Phyllis Forsythe’s outburst was odd, but it didn’t necessarily mean anything, I reasoned. I knew Phyllis was uncomfortable here, and maybe the murder had simply pushed her over the edge. But if she was as protective of her son as this appeared, perhaps she wasn’t such great mother-in-law material after all.
Fitz stayed at the limo, Shirley went off to check further into the food situation, and I ran up to the house. The lights were out. Michelle hadn’t wanted a blaze of house lights distracting the audience from the candlelit ceremony, but I felt a need for all light possible now. I flicked on every switch I passed on my way up to the attic floor. I knocked on the door, but there was no answer. I tentatively pushed it open. I realized that I was still clutching the tiara. I tossed it onto a chair.
Pam was sitting cross-legged on the bed, torn wedding gown tangled around her as carelessly as if it were a Goodwill reject. The rip in the skirt was bigger now. Fuzzy wisps had escaped the sleek coil the hairdresser had created for her hair. She was holding Phreddie in her lap as if he were all in this world she had to cling to.
No Sterling.
I went to the bed and put an arm around her. “You okay?”
“I’m alive. Michelle’s dead.” She still sounded as if she couldn’t quite comprehend that.
“The police will figure out who did it. They know how to handle these things.”
“They’re going to think I did it.”
I couldn’t think of any soothing remark to contradict that statement, because I thought it too. Detective Molino would poke around in the money and house situation, that was for sure. He’d see motive in neon. And Pam’s wild accusations about Michelle back when her father died would surely surface too. Due in part, at least, to me.
“Sweetie, I know it’s difficult, but I think you should come back down to the tent. Officers from the sheriff’s department are here to help now. They’ll need to talk to you.”
“I don’t know anything! I didn’t see anything! I don’t want to talk to anyone.”
“You’ll have to talk to them sooner or later. You need to help them find out who did this awful thing. And you need to talk to Sterling too. His mother seems quite upset.”
“Sterling.” She repeated the name in a strangely scornful tone and made no move to act on my plea to go back outside.
I tried a different tactic. “The officers said no one could leave. Shirley suggested the caterers might as well offer all that food to the guests.”
“By all means. What’s the line? Let them eat cake! Or in this case, prime rib, lobster, and cake.”
Phreddie stood up in mild alarm at Pam’s outburst, and her moment of giddiness collapsed.
She clutched him again and gave me a wan look. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for, wasn’t it? I just feel so . . . strange.”
“It’s a strange situation.”
“Okay.” She seemed to gather herself together. “It isn’t the guests’ fault this happened, and someone may as well get some good out of that food. I’ll change my clothes, and we’ll go see that they get fed.”
I wasn’t quite in agreement with her no-fault statement about the guests. So far as I could see, the killer had to be one of the guests. I was firmly stuffing any possibility of Pam’s guilt off in a dead-end corner of my mind.
“You’ll have to help me undress. Michelle cinched me into this thing, and I don’t think I can get out of it by myself.”
She placed Phreddie on a pillow, and I struggled with the laces at the back of the bodice. Pam took a deep breath when the torn gown finally puddled around her feet. Actually, by then, I was wondering how she’d been able to breathe at all in it. Wedding gown as murder weapon? But that was irrelevant now. Pam hadn’t died. Michelle had.
Pam stepped out of the gown and abandoned it there on the floor, but I gathered the frothy tiers and folded them at the foot of the bed. Phreddie came over to investigate, then made himself at home. I started to remove him, then shrugged. Maybe, at this point, the highest and best use for the $24,000 gown was as a cat bed. I strongly doubted it was ever going to see another wedding.
I don’t know what I expected Pam to change into, but what she chose were a pair of baggy old cargo pants and an equally baggy gray sweatshirt with Geeks Rule! emblazoned on it.
When we got to the front door, she stopped me with an almost fierce clutch on my arm.
“Will you stay with me, Andi?”
“I don’t think they’ll let me be with you when you’re questioned.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean, will you stay here, at the house, for a while? I’ll see that you get paid.”
I’d agreed with Michelle to stay through tomorrow and transport the guests to their flights as needed. Beyond that I had a couple of short limo reservations, but I could cancel them. So staying was possible, but I couldn’t think what help I could be beyond transporting people. And I was certain Pam needed more than that.
“Please, Andi?” she added when I hesitated. “I need you. I-I feel as if I’m still wandering around in that fog. You’re the only one I trust.”
“Me? Why would you trust me?”
“I know you didn’t kill Michelle, but I’m not so sure about anyone else. I don’t have any relatives or anyone to call on. You’re honest and dependable and you do what’s right and you don’t want anything.”
“There’s Sterling and his parents—”
She didn’t say anything, and I filled in my own thoughts. Which were that she didn’t know any of them all that well, either.
“Of course, Pam.” I patted her hand reassuringly in spite of another doubtful thought of my own: I wasn’t totally sure about Pam herself. “I’ll stay as long as you need me.”
Chapter Ten
Outside, another sheriff’s department car had arrived, plus a van from the medical examiner’s office. Inside the tent, one officer was videotaping the body and interior of the tent from all angles; another was doing the same thing with a regular camera. Another was taking measurements and marking them on a clipboard. A man I assumed was the medical examiner knelt by the body, but I couldn’t see what he was doing.
Flashlight beams, disembodied in the darkness, probed outside the tent now. A few cars were leaving, occupants apparently questioned and released.
I figured we’d better ask Detective Molino about feeding the crowd, but he was conferring with the medical examiner. Pam clung to me while we waited, as if she were afraid I might vanish into the night. A few people glanced at us, but I had the odd feeling most of them didn’t even recognize Pam out of her wedding finery. In her baggy old clothes, with about $498 of her $500 hair and makeup job gone, she looked about the fifteen I’d thought she was the day I met her.
I spotted Fitz several times as he circulated through the crowd, being his usual friendly and helpful self, once disappearing and then returning with a glass of water for an elderly woman. But if I knew Fitz, he was also shrewdly gathering bits of information.
Pam stared in dismay when Michelle’s body was loaded onto a stretcher, covered, and carried past where we stood by the entrance.
“What are they doing?” Her voice rose on a note of panic.
“In a homicide, the medical examiner takes charge of the body. They have to determine cause of death—”
“But they don’t need to do that. There’s a knife in her back!”
Which now made a spiky hump in the sheet. They’d loaded her on her stomach, apparently to keep from disturbing the knife. I knew from what Fitz had told me about a case on his TV show that entry angle of a knife could be important. I’d already concluded that anyone who could shove that knife to the hilt in Michelle’s back was no weakling.
Pam looked as if she might be going to interrupt the procession to the van, and I put a restraining hand on her arm. “Pam, you know about things like this. You did research for your book, remember?”
She hesitated but finally nodded and stepped back.
Detective Molino had followed the body to the van, and we intercepted him on the way back to the tent. He hesitated for a minute, as if the question I asked had never arisen before, but he finally agreed that it would be okay to feed the crowd.
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