by Laura Durham
“Car? Where are you going?”
We crossed the glittering Potomac and merged with other traffic onto Constitution Avenue. “Nowhere special. We just popped by Love Bridal Salon to apologize to Caroline for sending Tricia her way, and now we’re on our way to Charlie Palmer.”
“To eat?”
Kate bobbed her head up and down. “Let’s eat there. I’ve been having a craving for their crabmeat cocktail.”
“No,” I said to both Kate and Richard. “Tricia held her rehearsal dinner there. We owe the manager an apology, as well.”
“So you want me to believe that you’re driving all over town for no other reason than to apologize to your murdered bride’s wedding vendors?” Richard’s voice rose. “Are you out of your mind?”
“What?” I tried to sound as innocent as possible. I stayed in the middle lane as we drove past the imposing government buildings that lined the left side of the street along the approach to the White House.
“You know very well ‘what.’ You’re trying to dig up some information you can use to clear yourself, aren’t you?” Richard asked. “What happened to our conversation about trusting people and not having to be the person to fix everything all the time?”
“I’m considering it,” I said. “But we did discover that Tricia accused her mother of killing her father during a dress-fitting meltdown.”
“I don’t see what good that does you. Didn’t the bride have regular meltdowns and insult every person she came in contact with?”
“Well, yes.” I passed the White House and stopped at the traffic light. “But don’t you think there’s the possibility that her mother killed her to keep her quiet?”
Kate shook her head vigorously next to me, but I ignored her.
“The bigger questions are,” Richard said. “will the police think it’s worth pursuing and is that tidbit of information worth getting you in even deeper trouble for poking around in the case when you’ve been told not to?”
I hated when Richard was right. “Fine. But don’t you think it’s the least bit interesting that the mother of the bride might have killed her husband?”
“Annabelle, if I had a dollar for every wife who’s knocked off her rich husband I’d be on the beach in St. Barts, not brainstorming a menu for an Alice in Wonderland-themed brunch. You don’t happen to have any ideas, do you?”
“What about Cheshire cat canapés?” I said.
Kate snapped her fingers. “Queen of Romaine Hearts salad.”
“Not bad,” Richard said. “I had mini Queen of Clubs sandwiches and Mad Hatter cookie batter ice cream cones.”
I merged onto Pennsylvania Avenue, making a right onto a wide street lined with cars. This was usually my best bet for finding a spot near Charlie Palmer. Kate pointed at a tight parking space at the end of the row, and I swerved into it, backing as close as possible to the car behind me so only the tip of my car extended past the parking zone sign. Kate gave me a thumbs-up.
“Don’t forget that the groom was shot, too,” Richard said. “So the killer was someone who wanted them both out of the way.”
“And if I was going to kill my daughter,” Kate said. “I’d certainly do it before I spent all that money on a wedding, not after.”
“Spoken like a true mercenary,” Richard said.
Kate took it as a compliment and smiled.
“We’ve got to run.” I took the phone out of the cup holder and grabbed my purse from the back seat. “I’ll call you later.”
“I would tell you two to stay out of trouble, but I think I’d be wasting my breath.” Richard clicked off.
I stepped out of the car and onto the sidewalk. “It’s not like we can get in trouble on a weekday in broad daylight.”
Kate walked over to me in her cork wedge heels and adjusted her silk tank top so her cleavage showed. “Speak for yourself.”
Chapter 18
Kate pulled open the tall metal-and-glass doors leading into the upscale steakhouse. Charlie Palmer didn’t have dark wood or burgundy leather or any of the clubby touches you might expect of a steak house. It was all glass walls and natural light and clean lines, which made it an easier sell for brides. I ran my eyes over the sunken dining room with its row of fabric doughnut-shaped chandeliers suspended over square tables draped in white cloth. A pastel landscape took up most of the far wall and a tall arrangement of white calla lilies and twisting branches sat on a sideboard in the middle of the room.
A lean dark-skinned man in a black suit and matching black shirt looked up from the host stand when we walked in and smiled when he recognized Kate. “You’re back already?”
Kate had set up the private dining room for Tricia’s rehearsal dinner the previous Friday night while I had been running the ceremony rehearsal. Even though she’d only been on-site for an hour before guests arrived, Kate had a way of sticking in people’s memories. Especially if the people were men.
“I missed you already.” Kate squeezed the man’s arm. “Topher, this is my boss, Annabelle Archer. Annabelle, this is the man to know at Charlie Palmer. He’s one of the assistant managers but he does everything on-site for the private parties.”
Topher tried to suppress a grin. “She exaggerates.”
“It’s nice to meet you.” I held out my hand. I didn’t go for kisses as quickly as my assistant did. “Kate’s been talking about you nonstop since the rehearsal dinner on Friday.” A lie, of course. She hadn’t mentioned a word about this Topher fellow. But hopefully it was a lie that would pay off.
Topher shook my hand. “A table for two today?”
Kate linked her arm with Topher’s and rested her other hand on his chest. “Not today, sadly.” She made a pouty face. “We came about the review.”
Topher’s smile dropped away. “Our first one-star review on the Wed Boards.”
“We feel awful about it.” Kate rubbed Topher’s arm, and I felt like an intruder being so close to them. I rarely got to see Kate’s charm in action and when I did, it felt like I’d stumbled onto a late-night cable channel.
“The bride panned all of us,” I said, as much to remind Kate that I was standing right next to her as anything. “But we’re really sorry we brought her to you in the first place.”
Topher shook his head and broke eye contact with Kate to look at me. “It’s not your fault. And, like you said, she wrote bad reviews on everyone.”
“Isn’t he the greatest?” Kate asked, leaning into Topher.
He cleared his throat and glanced around him, perhaps remembering that he had a restaurant filled with guests in full view. “Come. Let me buy both of you a drink.” He led us to the L-shaped, polished wood bar that stretched along one side of the restaurant.
“Two Bombay Sapphire and tonics,” Kate said to the heavyset bartender as she hopped onto a high-backed upholstered barstool and crossed her legs. I took the stool next to her and Topher stood between us.
“Did you have any idea the client was unhappy before the review came out?” I asked. “Were there issues on the night of the dinner?”
Topher rested his elbow on the back of Kate’s barstool and stole a glance at her long legs, which were barely covered by her striped silk shorts. “Aside from the bride not mentioning any dietary restrictions until we took her order and then telling us she was gluten-free and vegan.”
I winced. “At a steakhouse?” I’d also personally seen Tricia put away more than one cheeseburger, so I knew she’d pretended to be a gluten-free vegan just so she could claim the service had been slow in her one-star review.
Topher shrugged. “We get it all the time. The chef managed to pull something together, but it did take him a few minutes.”
“But everyone else was happy?” I picked up the gin and tonic that had arrived in front of me and took a sip.
“To be honest, I wasn’t in the room the entire time. It was a busy night.”
“And Topher was keeping me company while I ate at the bar,” Kate said.
“You stayed?” I asked. “I thought you went home once the guests arrived.” Our usual rehearsal dinner MO was to set up the private room with the place cards and any favors, check in with the client when they arrived, and then leave the dinner service in the hands of the private-party manager.
Kate sipped her gin and tonic. “Tricia seemed to be on the warpath when she arrived, so I thought it might be smart to stay.”
I agreed. It was what I would have done.
“But she was fine the rest of the evening?” I asked.
“Aside from the fight with the groom,” Topher said. “That was some scene, but at least they took it outside.”
Kate’s eyes widened. “How did I miss that?”
“I think you’d gone to the ladies’ room,” Topher said. “It was almost at the end of the dinner when I heard the bride and groom arguing in our foyer. When she raised her voice, he told her to be quiet and pulled her outside.”
“I can’t believe I missed that,” Kate said. “I barely heard the groom give one opinion during the entire time we worked with them. I would have loved to see him argue back to her.”
I leaned forward in my stool. “Did you happen to hear what the fight was about?”
“Only a minute of it but I remember that she said she couldn’t take it anymore.”
I looked at Kate. “Take what? It wasn’t like she put up with much.”
“And then the groom told her to calm down, that it would all be over soon.”
Kate sucked in her breath. “You don’t think they had a suicide pact, do you?”
I gave her my most withering look. “No, I do not. They were shot in different rooms.”
Kate shrugged. “Maybe the groom had to do both parts of the pact. Shoot her and himself.”
I pressed a hand to my forehead. “The groom was shot in the back, remember? How could he shoot himself in the back?”
“Well, the argument doesn’t make any sense.” Kate drained the rest of her gin and tonic.
“The groom probably meant that the wedding would be over soon and all of her imagined stress with it.”
Even though that made the most sense I wondered about the timing. Was the bride worried about something else unrelated to the wedding? And did that something else get her killed?
Chapter 19
“There you are, dear. I’d started to worry.” Leatrice looked up from her laptop as I walked in the door of my apartment. She still wore the beige trench coat and fedora she’d had on when I left her earlier in the day, and I wondered if she’d moved an inch since I left.
I dropped my keys in the crystal bowl on the table by the door. “Our visit to Charlie Palmer turned into drinks and that turned into appetizers. I left Kate there after she insisted she would only have one more drink and then get an Uber home.”
I noticed the air had a musty smell, so I crossed the living room and cracked open one of my large windows. The wooden panes were original to the building, and they stuck in the summer heat and let in cold air in the winter, but at least I got a bit of a breeze being four stories up. I glanced around my living room, taking in the dust gathering in the corners and made a mental note to clean soon. Or at least spray some lemon Pledge so it smelled clean.
“I’m assuming there was a man involved,” Leatrice said. Kate’s weakness for attractive men was legendary.
I thought back to how cozy Kate and Topher had been when I’d left them. “You assume correctly.”
“How did your visits go?” Leatrice stood up from the dining room table where her research into Tricia’s murder still laid strewn around her laptop.
“You mean did I find any clues that might help clear our names?” I asked. “Not really, although I learned that Tricia accused her mother of killing her father and that the bride and groom had a big fight the night before the wedding at their rehearsal dinner.”
Leatrice followed me into the kitchen where I opened the refrigerator and removed the last two cans of Diet Dr Pepper. I handed one to Leatrice then popped open the other and took a drink, leaning back against the Formica countertop as I swallowed the fizzy sweetness. Diet Dr Pepper was the only diet soda I could drink without cringing. Truth be told, I preferred my carbonation with full sugar, but too many regular sodas and I’d have to cut out food to make up for the extra calories.
“Do you think the bride’s mother killed her husband?” Leatrice asked.
“Who knows? Probably not. Tricia said a lot of things that weren’t true just to hurt people. I wouldn’t be surprised if she said it just as a dig at her mother.”
Leatrice wrinkled her nose. “The more I learn about this girl, the less surprised I am that someone shot her.”
“Join the club. I’m shocked someone didn’t do it sooner.” I walked back out to my living room, sitting on one end of the couch and pushing a pile of wedding books to one side on the glass coffee table to make space for my soda.
Leatrice sat across from me in the pale yellow armchair that matched the couch, and her feet dangled above the floor. “What about the fight at the rehearsal dinner?”
“It doesn’t make any sense. The bride apparently said she couldn’t take it anymore and the groom told her it would all be over soon.”
“Wedding jitters?” Leatrice suggested.
“Maybe,” I said. “But it doesn’t fit their pattern. I never saw the two of them fight once the entire time we worked with them. The groom let Tricia say awful things and never made a peep, but the night before the wedding he snaps back at her and tells her to be quiet. The worst part is that I missed it. I would’ve given good money to see someone tell that bridezilla to shut up.” I reached down and grabbed my Diet Dr Pepper. “Did you have any luck online?”
Leatrice clapped her hands together and jumped out of the chair. “You could say that.” She hurried over and picked up her laptop. “You know how I was researching all the people and places she trashed online? Well, I found one person who fought back.”
I sat up. “You mean someone responded to her reviews?”
Leatrice nodded so energetically her fedora nearly flew off her head. “A French baker. She panned his profiteroles, and he responded saying that an American palate couldn’t possibly appreciate a French pastry and that if they ever crossed paths, she’d be sorry.”
“What was his name?” I asked, feeling my stomach do a preemptive flip.
Leatrice looked down at her screen. “It doesn’t have a name for the baker, but his shop is called Pastries by Philippe.”
“It couldn’t be,” I said, pulling my phone out of my pocket and dialing Richard, who answered on the first ring.
“I was just about to call you,” he said. “Are you home?”
There was a knock on the door.
“I’ll get it, dear.” Leatrice put her laptop back down on the living room table and crossed the room.
“Before you start,” I said to Richard, guessing he was about to launch into a long and dramatic story. “Who did the Hay-Adams Hotel hire to do all of their wedding cakes?”
Leatrice opened the door and Richard walked in still holding his phone to his ear. “The new one? Pastries by Philippe. Why?”
I hung up my phone. “Because Tricia had an online feud with him over a bad review she wrote about his profiteroles a year ago.”
Richard arched an eyebrow as he stepped closer. “Interesting.”
Leatrice looked from me to Richard. “Why is that interesting?”
“Because Tricia had her wedding at the Hay-Adams Hotel, and they subcontract out all their wedding cakes,” I said. “They used to use a sweet lady who lived on the Eastern Shore, but she got tired of the drive, so I heard they hired a new baker.”
“And the new baker is this Philippe fellow who threatened the bride?” Leatrice asked.
“But would the baker ever know the name of the couple getting married?” Richard adjusted his black leather cross-body bag. “Doesn’t the hotel give him the design and size and he delivers it wi
thout ever meeting the couple?”
I shook my head. “They identify the wedding cakes by the couples names in case they have two weddings on a weekend with a similar design but different flavors on the inside.”
“So the baker would have seen the bride’s name on the order sent by the hotel?” Leatrice tapped her chin. “The plot thickens.”
“But why would a baker shoot the bride when he could have poisoned her with wedding cake?” Richard asked.
“Maybe because he would have had to poison all the wedding guests?” I shook my head. “I don’t think any review is bad enough to warrant a mass murder.”
“Clearly you’ve never spent much time on Yelp.” Richard shifted his black messenger bag in front of him, tugging the tab closure on the side that had popped open.
I eyed his bag. “The baker had motive. If the order the hotel sent him listed the couple’s address, then he also had opportunity. I think we should go talk to him.”
Richard did not look convinced. “It’s a stretch.”
“Of course it’s a stretch.” I threw my hands in the air. “Just like the mom is a stretch. But whoever killed her had a reason and, so far, Tricia’s online victims have the most compelling and public reasons.”
Leatrice held up the pile of reviews she’d printed out. “And we have over a hundred of them.”
“Including one of Wedding Belles, might I remind you.” Richard slipped the wide leather strap of his bag over his head and set it on my couch, where it promptly rolled over to one side and barked.
I gaped at Richard. “Are you carrying that dog in your bag?”
Before he could answer, a brown-and-black mop of fur pushed open the top flap of the bag. Richard raised a hand. “Not a word, Annabelle.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Only if you agree to come with me to talk to Philippe.”
Richard put his hands on his hips. “And if I don’t?”
I shrugged. “I post a photo of you and your new dog on Instagram and tag you with the hash tag #puppylove.”
He staggered back a few feet. “You wouldn’t dare.”