Review to a Kill

by Laura Durham

  “Did you want to talk about the flowers?” I asked.

  She waved a hand at me. “No. They’re fine. It was the florist’s cologne that set off my migraine.”

  I knew Mack didn’t wear cologne, but I didn’t dare argue with her if she’d made peace with her bouquet. That put us one step closer to walking down the aisle.

  “Get Madeleine in here, too,” the bride said to Fern.

  I heard him sigh as he called to the maid of honor. I leaned back so I could see through the open doorway and into the living room. The petite strawberry blonde hopped down from the makeup stool and hurried into the bedroom.

  “Do you need anything, Tricia?”

  The bride took a deep breath and exhaled. “I know you hate wearing your hair pulled back because it makes you look like a ferret, but I need you to wear it up since I’m going to have my hair down now. I want to be the only one with loose hair.”

  Fern and I exchanged a look. This was officially the first time I’d ever heard a bride tell a bridesmaid that she looked like a ferret. It was not the first time I’d had a bride try to make a pretty bridesmaid look worse than her, though. Tricia wasn’t plain. Her dark hair and ice blue eyes made her striking, but she wasn’t delicate and pretty in a feminine way like her friend.

  I glanced at Madeleine, who looked nothing like a ferret, and whose eyes were unblinking. Madeleine nodded and forced a smile. “Of course, Tricia. Whatever you want. It’s your wedding day.”

  Tricia beckoned her only attendant over and grasped her hand. “Madeleine has been my best friend since our freshman year in college. Madeleine and Dave and me. The Three Musketeers, remember?”

  Madeleine laughed. “All for one and one for all.”

  Fern and I laughed politely, but I wondered why either of us needed to be present for this moment.

  Tricia sat up slowly, propping herself on her elbows. “By the time Fern finishes your bun, I should have recovered enough to do my hair.”

  “Do you need me?” I asked, taking a step toward the door. “I was going to check on the ceremony setup downstairs.”

  “You can go.” Tricia rubbed her temples. “But don’t send me Kate again. Her bouncing makes my head pound.” She reached for her phone on the bedside table and began typing with her thumbs.

  For the thousandth time since answering Tricia’s initial phone call, I regretted ever meeting her.

  Fern walked me to the door and kissed me on the cheek. “At least this hussy doesn’t have a problem with flouncing.”

  “I’ll be back up in thirty.”

  “She’ll be ready or she’ll be dead,” Fern whispered in my ear.

  “Talk about a Sophie’s Choice.”

  He winked. “You’re telling me.”

  As I pulled the door to the suite closed behind me, my cell phone starting singing “Pachelbel’s Canon” from inside my pocket. I pulled it out and answered before I noticed the name of the caller.

  “Wedding Belles, this is Annabelle.”

  “It’s me.” Me was Richard of Richard Gerard Catering, my best friend since I’d started my wedding-planning business more than six years earlier and he’d taken me under his wing. Richard was known for his impeccable style, his cutting-edge cuisine, and his love of designer clothes. I must have brought some sort of balance to his life because I didn’t own one clothing label that met his approval, I could subsist on Diet Dr Pepper and takeout Thai for weeks, and my style would be called casual at best. “How’s it going with Too Tired Tricia?”

  “Very funny,” I whispered as I walked down the hallway to the elevator. “I think we’re going to get her down the aisle.”

  “I’d hope so considering the budget on this one.”

  “You know I would have brought it to you if I could have,” I said. “But the hotel was the best fit.” Richard’s catering company only did catering for mansions, museums, and historic sites that didn’t have their own kitchens.

  “Don’t mention it. It’s nice to have a weekend off for once. Anyway, I don’t think I could take the stress of waiting to see what she writes.”

  I paused in front of the elevator bank. “What who writes?”

  “The bride,” Richard said. “Didn’t I tell you that she has quite the reputation in the culinary world?”

  “She’s a culinary writer?” I didn’t think she did anything since she was both wealthy and busy pretending to have chronic fatigue syndrome.

  “No. She’s famous for her poisoned-pen reviews. She’s panned just about every restaurant in town.”

  I felt lightheaded and put my hand out to the wall to steady myself. “Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”

  “I just put two and two together.” He paused and cleared his throat. “But I’m sure that’s just restaurants. I don’t think she’ll write bad reviews about her own wedding.”

  I glanced back at the door to the Jefferson Suite and remembered her typing away at her phone. “I hope you’re right.”

  Chapter 3

  “She’s an internet troll, too?” Mack clutched Kate’s arm for support.

  Kate staggered a few steps since Mack had a hundred pounds on her, and then she steadied herself. “Just when I thought the bride couldn’t get any more charming.”

  I’d texted Kate, Buster, and Mack to meet me downstairs in the Hay-Adams Room. We were using the smaller downstairs room for the ceremony, and then guests would go upstairs to the rooftop for the reception. I wanted to put the finishing touches on the ceremony and drop the latest bombshell in person. I needed to be sure none of them were standing on the balcony when they heard that our difficult bride had a penchant for the poisoned pen.

  Kate and I had placed the ceremony programs on the chairs while Buster and Mack had draped ribbon across the back of the aisle we’d created using rows of rustic chairs with woven cane backs. Earlier in the day, they’d laid an aisle runner made out of jute and had lined the sides of it with a thick carpeting of moss and colorful tulips that appeared to be growing out of it. At the front of the aisle, they’d created a canopy out of branches and ivy in front of a solid wall of boxwood that was dotted with wire-basket window boxes crowded with lavender tulips and pink hyacinths. Candles had been lit, and the smell of burning wax mingled with the fresh smell of greenery.

  Guests were gaping and angling for pictures with their phones as they entered the room, so I pulled my crew off to the side. “All we have to do is make sure that everything is perfect, and she won’t have any reason to write a bad review.”

  Buster crossed his arms over his chest. “You know trolls don’t work that way. They do it for the attention, not because they’re actually trying to give an honest review.”

  “Maybe I misspoke when I referred to her as an internet troll,” I said, keeping my voice low so the guests, also the troll’s friends and family, wouldn’t hear.

  “You didn’t.” Kate looked up from scrolling on her phone. “I already found one of her reviews on the Wed Boards and it’s not good.”

  The Wed Boards were an online forum where brides compared weddings, offloaded used wedding accessories, and shared what they called “picks and pans” of wedding vendors.

  Mack craned his neck to see Kate’s phone. “How could she have a Wed Boards review yet? We’re in the middle of her wedding.”

  “She’s one of those Weddies,” Kate said, referring to the brides who lived on the Wed Boards and thought that obsessing about weddings made them qualified to be wedding planners.

  “You’re sure it’s her?” I asked.

  She looked up at me. “The username is TriciaandDaveatTheHay.”

  Mack gave a low whistle. “That’s pretty specific.”

  “She trashed a florist she called before she hired us. Gave them one star,” Kate said.

  Mack looked affronted. “She called another florist? I’m glad I didn’t know that before you brought her to us.”

  Kate cleared her throat and began to read the review. “Even though we
didn’t hire this florist, I was disappointed that they couldn’t bother to return my call within the same afternoon. Clearly this business can’t manage their time well.”

  “The same afternoon? Are you kidding me? I can understand twenty-four hours but the same afternoon?” Buster said. “What if we have a long meeting with a bride or a walk-through off-site?”

  I dug in my suit pocket for my stash of gummi bears and popped a handful in my mouth, savoring the comforting rush of sugar. “Well, she does spend most of her time in bed pretending to be ill, so I’m sure an afternoon feels like forever.”

  “I can’t believe she hired us,” Kate said. “We’ve certainly let calls go for more than a few hours.”

  “I think I just happened to pick up the phone the day she first called,” I said.

  “Good thing, right?” Kate said.

  “Is it?” I couldn’t help wondering if the florist who got the review for not returning a call got off easy. Were we all in for one-star reviews by a bride who loved getting attention for bad behavior?

  Buster nudged me. “Groom at six o’clock.”

  I turned around to see the tall, handsome groom in his white dinner jacket scanning the room.

  “Are you ready to get married?” I asked as I approached, giving him my best “let’s do this” smile.

  Dave rubbed his hands together and smiled without meeting my eyes. “Sure. It looks great in here. Very French.”

  “I’m glad you like it.” I took in the room alongside him and had to admit that it looked spectacular.

  “Not that I’m the one you have to please.” He laughed and went back to rubbing his hands.

  “We try to make everyone happy on a wedding day,” I said. “Can I get you anything before we start the processional? Water? A beer?”

  I hoped the groom held some sway with his future wife, and I hoped it wasn’t too obvious that I was kissing his ass. What I really felt like offering him was a new identity and a one-way ticket to Papua New Guinea so he could run away from Tricia Toker forever.

  He shook his head and a brown curl came loose and dropped onto his forehead. “No, Tricia would be livid if I drank before the ceremony.”

  My phone vibrated with an incoming text and I pulled it out of my pocket to look. Fern had the bride ready and was bringing her and the maid of honor down.

  I put my hand on the groom’s elbow. “Why don’t I go ahead and get you tucked away with the officiant for the ceremony?”

  He jumped at my touch. “It’s time?”

  I nodded and felt like apologizing. But I reminded myself that it wasn’t my fault this nice guy was marrying an awful woman or that he’d gone all in and worked for her family company, too. I was only the wedding planner, not the idiot who’d proposed to her. Whenever this scenario played itself out in my work, I told myself that the seemingly terrible bride or groom must have some wonderful qualities they kept hidden from the world and only their betrothed saw. In Tricia’s case, the qualities must have been hidden very deeply.

  I steered the groom back to his holding room then pulled Kate outside the ballroom with me to wait for the bride. “Where are Buster and Mack?”

  “They went back upstairs when I told them the bride would be coming down soon.”

  “Cowards,” I said.

  “Lucky cowards,” Kate said under her breath.

  I recalled the bride’s aversion to Kate’s bounciness. “Why don’t you go stand next to the harpist, and I’ll give you the cues from the door?”

  “And avoid an encounter with Tricia the Troll? You don’t have to tell me twice.” Kate headed back into the Hay-Adams Room before I could tell her not to call the bride that out loud.

  I heard the lobby elevator doors ping open and rushed around the corner to meet it. The small elevator was filled with a mass of netting with a navy blue beret peeking behind it. Tricia stepped out, her full tulle ball gown rustling as she moved. Her dark hair spilled over her bare shoulders in waves and she carried the white tulip bouquet ringed with green nerines. If she weren’t such an unpleasant person, I would have thought she looked beautiful.

  She clutched my hand in a grip surprisingly strong for someone always so weary. “The wedding needs to start now. Right. Now.”

  I darted a glance at Fern, who was nodding vigorously behind her. “You got it.”

  I ran to the door of the Hay-Adams Room and caught Kate’s eye next to the harpist, giving her the signal to start the processional. Luckily, the processional consisted only of the maid of honor followed by the bride walking with her mother. I pulled the maid of honor to the doorway as I heard the harp begin to play and spotted the groom and officiant moving into place under the floral canopy. I smiled at Madeleine in her pink satin Vera Wang sheath, noticing that her hair had been pulled back so tightly her eyes now turned up at the corners. I didn’t think she looked like a ferret, but it didn’t look comfortable. I gave her a nod, and she set off down the aisle.

  I turned to the bride and her mother. Fern had draped the blusher over the bride’s face and stood behind her fluffing the thick layers of tulle in her skirt. The mother of the bride, her pale green dress hidden almost completely by the wedding gown, held her daughter by the arm and kept her nervous eyes trained on her face.

  I smoothed the blusher so that it fell behind her bouquet. “Are you ready?”

  She let out a breath, and the single layer of tulle that was the blusher quivered. “I don’t know if I can make it down the aisle.”

  Oh, no, I thought. We did not work this hard and get this far to have the bride flake out at the last minute.

  I put my hands around hers on the bouquet stems. “I know you can do this.”

  The mother raised her bitten thumbnail to her mouth. “Maybe we should postpone for an hour or two.”

  Was she crazy? If we postponed, we wouldn’t be starting the reception until ten o’clock at night and we had to be out of the rooftop ballroom by midnight. Even I couldn’t squeeze a four-course dinner, dancing, toasts, and cake cutting into two hours. I shot Fern a desperate look.

  He dropped the back of the bride’s dress and came to stand next to her, linking his arm in hers. “You’re going down that aisle right now if I have to drag you myself. Understood?”

  Tricia and her mother both nodded mutely, and I stepped aside as the threesome walked through the door and down the aisle, with Fern jerking the bride forward every time she slowed down.

  Kate had edged her way to the back of the room and joined me outside where we could watch the ceremony through the glass panes of the wooden doors.

  “I can’t look,” I said. “Is he still up there?”

  “I think he just gave away the bride,” Kate said. “I did not see this one coming, although I like Fern better as the father of the bride than as the priest. He was blessing me for weeks after that wedding. Now he’s shaking the groom’s hand. You’ve got to see this, Annabelle. The groom looks so confused.”

  I looked up to the ceiling. “Why can’t we have one normal wedding? Just one?”

  “Because there’s no such thing,” Kate said. “Weddings are crazy. Period.”

  I hated when Kate was right.

  Chapter 4

  “I’m coming,” I said as I padded down the hallway of my apartment in my socked feet. I surveyed the living room, still littered with remains of the weekend’s wedding: my boxy metal emergency kit sitting next to the couch, my black Longchamp bag filled with the wedding files slumped against the dining table, a pink shoe bag with my change of shoes flung on the rug, the folded-up wedding schedule covered in check marks laying where it had fallen onto the hardwood floor by the door, and samples of the program, menu card, and escort cards for me to file later tossed on the glass coffee table. I tried to ignore the mess, and my aching feet, as I opened the door.

  “It is Monday morning, right?” Kate asked, giving my outfit of jeans and a Wedding Belles T-shirt the once over. “Don’t we have a meeting with a prospective
couple?”

  I held the door open wide, letting Kate come inside as she extended the nubby brown coffee holder in front of her with one hand. “They canceled. Left a message last night.”

  Kate waved a hand over her blue paisley dress and high-heel slides. “And you couldn’t let me know?”

  “Sorry.” I took the paper cup she offered me, feeling the warmth of the beverage through the cardboard sleeve, and motioned her to follow me back to the office. I knew without taking a sip that she’d brought me my favorite hot mocha, and I felt a wave of affection for my assistant. “I didn’t check it until an hour ago.”

  Kate dropped her pale pink purse on the floor of my home office, which consisted of a white IKEA sawhorse desk, a rolling leather chair, and a tall filing cabinet. “That doesn’t seem like you.”

  “I’m still recovering from Saturday.” I took a sip of the rich coffee and closed my eyes as I swallowed. “Thanks for this. It’s just what I needed.”

  Kate took my black desk chair and kicked her shoes off under my desk, setting her own drink, a nonfat soy latte if it was her usual, on the wooden surface. “I think we’ll all be recovering from that one for a long time.”

  “Fern’s the only one of us who seemed to have a good time.” I sat down cross-legged on the carpet.

  “Maybe we would have had fun if we’d led a conga line when the band played ‘Dancing Queen.’”

  I groaned. “Don’t remind me.”

  “You have to admit that he embraced the father-of-the bride role. And he may have been the only reason Tricia stayed for her entire reception.” Kate spun around in my chair. “Plus, he gave a great toast. It didn’t have anything to do with the couple, but it was better than a lot I’ve heard.”

  “I missed all the toasts after his but I can’t imagine they were as good.” I set my cup next to me and dug into a cardboard box, pulling out a pair of white cubes with clear lids and handing one to Kate. “Leftover doughnut favors.”