Review to a Kill

by Laura Durham

  “Coffee?” She held up a Thermos without turning around.

  “No, thanks.” I leaned forward so my head poked between the two front seats. “Are you sure this is such a good idea?”

  Leatrice turned her head and our faces were inches apart. “I thought coffee was typical on stakeouts. Should I have brought something else instead?”

  “Not the coffee.” Richard sat forward so his head was next to mine. “She means this stakeout is a bad idea.”

  “But this guy is your only suspect,” Leatrice said. “And someone should be here in case he comes back. In the movies, the bad guy always comes back.”

  “So what happens when he comes back?” I asked, trying to ignore the dog head that had wiggled between Richard and me.

  Leatrice’s face lit up, and she rubbed the Yorkie’s head. “I call in reinforcements.”

  Richard glanced at me. “I hope she doesn’t mean us.”

  I sat back. “Promise me you won’t leave this car or approach the house or try to be a hero.”

  “Of course not.” Leatrice patted the armrest next to her, and Hermès jumped up on it with a happy yip. “I’m strictly a surveillance operation.”

  That made me feel somewhat better but didn’t completely allay my nerves. “This guy could be dangerous, Leatrice. We know he has guns.” I eyed the bright red smart car parked tightly in front of us. “Can you even drive away if you need to?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Leatrice said. “If I need to, I can drive over the car in front of me.”

  Given the size of her car and the minuscule proportions of the smart car, I believed her. I looked up and down the residential block, cars filling every inch of the parallel street spaces. Most were compacts or small SUVs. A smattering of BMWs and VWs. Nothing like this boat-sized Ford that stretched out the length of the row house it sat in front of.

  “Won’t you need to move after a certain amount of time?” Richard asked. “The ticketing in Georgetown is the most efficient part of the DC government.”

  Leatrice pointed to a sticker on her windshield. “I have a zone permit. But speaking of parking tickets, guess what popped up when my guys were searching the police database for Toker?”

  Richard’s eyebrows rose, and I shook my head. “I know, I know.” Now wasn’t the time to go into all the questions Richard had about that sentence.

  “A parking ticket given out the morning of the murder right on this block to a Toker,” Leatrice said.

  “I would have thought if the bride lived here she’d have gotten a resident parking permit,” Richard said.

  I shook my head. “Tricia didn’t drive. Too stressful.”

  “It was given to a silver Land Rover registered to a Constance Toker,” Leatrice said. “One hour before you and Kate found the groom lying in a puddle of blood.”

  “Constance? You mean Connie?” I raised a hand to my mouth. “That’s the bride’s mother.”

  Richard looked at me. “Weren’t you telling me the mother might have had a motive?”

  “The bride accused her of murdering her husband. But we dismissed that as Tricia being her awful self. And we couldn’t imagine her mother ever killing her.”

  “Well, now you have the mother’s car at the scene of the crime, which is what we call opportunity,” Leatrice said. “It might be time to revisit that motive.”

  “Hello in there!” A sharp rap on the car window made me jump. “Open up.”

  I could only see legs in dark pants from where I sat, and my heart raced as I imagined that it was the police. Or, worse, the gun-happy neighbor.

  Leatrice smiled, leaning over to pull up the manual lock on the passenger side door. “My reinforcements have arrived.”

  The passenger door opened, and Fern stuck his head inside. “Am I too late to the party?”

  Chapter 24

  Fern sat in the passenger seat and closed the door behind him, placing a pair of white paper bags on the floor between his legs. From the smell that filled the car, I could tell the bags contained something with plenty of sugar, and my stomach growled reflexively. When had I last eaten? I thought back over my day. Had my daily food intake really consisted of a gin and tonic, half an empanada, and a Diet Dr Pepper? No wonder I felt light-headed.

  “What’s in the bags?” I asked as Hermès hopped down from his armrest perch to sniff the bags.

  “First things first,” Richard said. “What are you wearing?”

  Fern twisted around to face us and tipped his brown fedora up so we could see his eyes. “This is a stakeout, right?”

  Since Fern always dressed to the occasion, the beige trench coat with the collar flipped up around his neck made perfect sense to me. “What do you have on underneath?”

  Fern grinned at me. “I’m glad you asked. Just in case we need to investigate the target’s house covertly, I wore clothes that would blend in.” He opened his trench coat.

  “A catsuit?” Richard gaped at him. “You think a black skintight unitard on a man in Georgetown is blending in?”

  Fern made a face at Richard and pulled his trench coat closed. “At night it will.”

  I glanced outside where the sun peeked behind the tops of the trees. It would be dark soon enough.

  “I think you look perfect,” Leatrice said. “Thanks for coming and bringing supplies.”

  Fern patted Leatrice’s arm and reached for one of the white bags being inspected by the dog. “Who wants a hand pie?”

  Richard flopped back on the seat and put a hand over his eyes. “This may be the only stakeout in history where the supplies are hand pies.”

  “What are hand pies?” Leatrice asked as Fern handed her a pastry wrapped in wax paper.

  “If you ask me, they’re the perfect food for a stakeout.” Fern passed one back to me. “They’re like pies—pastry with a fruit filling—but they’re made into enclosed pockets, so you can eat them with your hands.”

  I pulled back the white paper covering my still-warm hand pie to reveal a half-moon shaped pocket of pastry crimped around the edges. They’d been deep fried so bits of the grease dotted the wax paper. “What flavor did you get?”

  “Some cherry, some strawberry rhubarb.” Fern passed a wax-paper bundle to Richard.

  Leatrice inspected her pastry. “Isn’t this clever?”

  I bit into the edge of mine, and warm cherry filling oozed out. The combination of the flaky crust and the sweet cherries was heavenly. I closed my eyes to fully savor the sensation, and it took effort not to moan out loud. I felt tiny paws on my leg and opened my eyes to find a pair of dark doggie eyes inches away from mine as he inspected my dessert.

  “No people food, Hermès,” Richard said, wagging a finger at him.

  The dog ignored him, either because he didn’t recognize his new name or because Richard’s command sounded more like one of his style suggestions. No white after Labor Day. No flip-flops unless you can see water. No people food. Richard clearly hadn’t learned how to be an alpha dog yet.

  “So I’ve got the outfit and the supplies,” Fern said. “Who are we staking out and why?”

  Leatrice produced a small spiral notebook and flipped it open. I couldn’t help noticing that the notebook looked strikingly similar to the ones Detective Reese used to take notes.

  “His name is Frank Ferguson,” Leatrice said. “He lives next door to the victims. The unpainted brick house. His alias is Effing Frank.”

  I thought about telling Leatrice that Effing Frank wasn’t an alias, just what the bride called him because she was a crappy person but I decided not to bother.

  We all turned our necks to look at the redbrick house. Even though it wasn’t fully dark yet, I could tell the lights were off inside. My eyes slid to Tricia and Dave’s house, which stood mere feet away. The yellow crime-scene tape had been removed from the doorway, but the house looked still and foreboding. A shiver ran through me as I thought back to only a few days earlier when Kate and I had walked into through the front do
or and found the groom in a pool of blood. I tried not to think of the fact that the bride had also been upstairs with a bullet hole in her head.

  As Leatrice told Fern what we knew about Effing Frank—mostly that he worked in corporate security and belonged to the NRA—I tried to put our new clues into place. We had a neighbor who hated the victims and had supposedly threatened them. The fact that he owned at least one handgun and seemed to have disappeared made him the most obvious suspect on our list. I thought about the email the groom had shown me. Did it come from this guy?

  Then I thought about what Leatrice had told us about Tricia’s mother being at the scene of the crime. Even though the mother had seemed devoted to her daughter, I’d been wrong about clients before. If the mom really had knocked off her wealthy husband and the bride had evidence on her, she could kill to keep it quiet and to keep from going to prison for life. Especially if she’d already killed once before.

  “Annabelle?” Richard’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts. “Earth to Annabelle.”

  I gave my head a small shake. “Sorry. I was thinking about the two new suspects. Both of them could be guilty for different reasons, but I’m not convinced by either one yet.”

  “I know about the guy we’re watching, but who is the second new suspect?” Fern asked, crumbling his wax paper into a ball and dropping into the empty bag.

  “The mother of the bride’s Land Rover was parked on this street the morning Tricia was killed, but it wasn’t here when Kate and I arrived. That puts the mom at the scene of the crime at the time of the murder.”

  “You’re sure you didn’t see her car?” Richard asked.

  “I’m sure. We went to enough meetings with Mrs. Toker to recognize her silver Land Rover from a mile away, and I know it wasn’t parked on the street when we arrived at Tricia’s house that morning. That means Connie Toker was here and then left.”

  Fern put a hand to his chest. “That doesn’t look good. But do you really think Connie is the type to shoot someone?”

  I remembered that Fern knew the bride’s mother because he’d also done her hair for years. “I still don’t swallow the idea of the bride’s mother shooting her own daughter, especially after she’d just shelled out over a hundred grand for her wedding.”

  Fern shook his head. “She’s too skittish to kill someone.”

  “But why was she here?” I asked. “And if she just popped by for a visit, why didn’t the groom mention his mother-in-law when he told me the morning’s events?”

  The more we learned, the less this murder made any sense at all.

  Chapter 25

  I thanked the doormen as they held open the two sets of heavy wooden doors leading to the Hay-Adams Hotel lobby. I’d made good time to the hotel even though it sat in the heart of downtown directly across from the White House. It helped that I’d missed the morning rush hour. I glanced down at my phone. I even had a few minutes to spare before the ten o’clock meeting. Not enough time to grab a bite in the hotel restaurant, my favorite spot in the city for a really luxurious breakfast, but maybe if the meeting went quickly I’d be able to eat afterward. I’d only had a bottled Frappuccino and a banana on the drive in.

  I hesitated inside and scanned the small interior. Rich wood walls extended at least twelve feet high then became ivory plaster that soared upward in a series of arches leading to the intricately carved ceiling. A round mahogany table sat in front of the pair of elevators directly across from the front entrance. It held a massive urn packed with an abundance of white lilies. I breathed in the heady scent of the flowers as I caught my breath. To my right and left were small groupings of maroon upholstered wing chairs arranged around dark wood coffee tables on thick carpets. I spotted Kate in one of the chairs, her legs crossed and her oversized black Kate Spade tote at her feet.

  “So what’s this about?” I asked as she saw me and stood. I noticed that Kate wore one of her more conservative looks, a pink sheath dress with a scoop neck, although the hemline still ran shorter than anything I owned.

  Kate slipped her feet into her nude heels. “So you know how you’re a little bit obsessed about clearing our name with the police?”

  “You mean so we don’t go to jail for a crime we didn’t commit? Yep. That rings a bell.”

  Kate waved a hand at me. “And that’s all great, but while you’re doing that, our reputation is going down the toilet. I, for one, would like to have a job once this is all over.”

  I let my shoulders sag. I had been ignoring social media because I couldn’t bear to read what was being said. “Is it that bad?”

  Kate shrugged. “It’s not good. I’ve been thinking of ways to fix it, and I may have come up with a great one. Do you remember that I told you the Weddies were getting together to pay tribute to Tricia?”

  I glanced around me. Aside from the concierge and the front desk attendant, who both spoke low into their phones, Kate and I were the only people in the lobby. “Yes?”

  “Well, they’re meeting here.”

  I tried not to let the irritation show in my voice. “I drove across town to crash a meeting of Weddies?”

  “Not crash exactly,” Kate said.

  “Well, we can’t announce we’re wedding planners, can we? Aren’t they very strict about being brides-only?” I rummaged through my purse, found a MAC lipstick, and applied it by memory, pressing my lips together and dropping the black tube back in my bag. “I thought perhaps this was a meeting with the hotel catering ladies. I would have dressed up if you’d told me we were hanging with women who’ve elevated judging to an art form.”

  Kate passed her eyes over me and twitched one shoulder. “You’re fine. I mean, it wouldn’t kill you to take out the orange ponytail holder but the dress is ironed.”

  I felt relieved that I’d picked up a huge load of dry cleaning before Tricia’s wedding and that the navy fit and flare dress I wore had been in that load. I pulled out my hair elastic and tossed my head upside down, shaking my hands through the back of my hair before flipping it back up. “Better?”

  Kate gave me a thumbs up. “The hardcore Weddies are meeting in the private dining room at the back of the Lafayette Room.”

  “Don’t tell me they picked the Hay because Tricia held her wedding here.”

  “You got it,” Kate said. “These girls are full-on wedding groupies. They’re the ones who stay in the forum after they get married to give half-baked advice to the new girls.”

  I cringed. “It sounds awful. Are you sure there isn’t a tank of great whites we could jump in? You know, something less terrifying.”

  Kate stood up. “Come on. This is the best way to find out what’s being said about Wedding Belles and nip it in the bud. If we can get these girls on our side it will go a long way to repairing our reputation.”

  “Fine.” I sighed. “But what if they recognize us? Our picture is on our Wed Boards profile and our website.”

  Kate slid on a pair of oversized sunglasses and handed another pair to me. “Voilà. Instant disguise.”

  I put on my pair and eyed Kate. The large squared-off frames wouldn’t have confused someone who knew her well, but they hid enough of her face that she wouldn’t be instantly recognized. I hoped my round tortoiseshell pair did the same.

  Kate nudged me as we walked up the short flight of carpeted stairs leading to the Lafayette Room. “And since all the Weddies are in mourning for Tricia the Terrible, no one will think twice when we keep them on to hide our tears.”

  We reached the top of the stairs and paused. The Lafayette Room was laid out like an L with the long side stretched out along the wall of the hotel facing the White House. Floor-to-ceiling windows covering the far side of the restaurant allowed sun to pour into the room. Upholstered chairs surrounded tables draped in cream linens and set with glittering crystal and white bone china. I inhaled the rich aroma of gourmet coffee and buttery pastries and wished we were sitting down to eat.

  Kate said a few words to the maître d�
� and we were led through the restaurant toward the back. Even at a midmorning hour between breakfast and lunch, the Lafayette Room buzzed with political luminaries drinking cappuccinos and making deals. Political bigwigs weren’t as easy to recognize as Hollywood celebrities, but I felt sure I’d seen some of the faces on cable news.

  The energy changed once we reached the glass doors of the private dining room at the far end of the restaurant. The rectangular room had a crystal chandelier and white-shaded sconces on the walls. Women stood talking in small groups, some holding flutes of Champagne, and I guessed that not a single one of them was over thirty.

  When Kate opened one of the glass doors, I heard the hissing of whispered conversations, one on top of the other. A few women paused to glance at us then resumed talking when they realized they didn’t know us.

  “These sunglasses are working like a charm,” Kate said.

  A waiter passed us holding a silver tray of Champagne. Kate plucked off two glasses and passed one to me.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  Kate slid her glasses down her nose and peered over them. “Just follow my lead.”

  She sidled up to a group of four women in sundresses with designer bags swinging from their arms. Instead of joining them, she turned her back on the group and faced me. She took a sip of bubbly then tapped her ear to indicate that she was listening to them.

  “It isn’t the first time they’ve been involved in a murder,” one of the women said. “The girl over there told me their clients get knocked off all the time.”

  I fought the urge to correct the woman. We’d only had one client get killed before, thank you very much. Well, Tricia made two.