by Elaine Viets
Desiree ripped off her heavy veil and crown and dropped them on the floor. Then she ran upstairs to the dressing room.
That’s right, girl, Helen thought. Get rid of what’s dragging you down. She picked up the crown and veil and followed Desiree at a slower pace. She was drained by the wedding’s raw emotions. Helen’s magical night with Phil seemed years away. Today she could not believe any romance had a happy ending.
Memories of her own wedding haunted Helen. She’d been so in love with Rob. At the reception, she’d given him a bite of wedding cake. He’d mashed his piece into her face, to the delight of his cronies. Her maid of honor had applauded. Helen had laughed.
Her wedding photographer caught the scene. Helen thought it was the symbol of her marriage. She had seventeen years of sly humiliation, while she smiled and took it. Later, she learned Rob had had an affair with her maid of honor. She’d learned a lot she didn’t want to know, after she picked up the crowbar and smashed her marriage.
Run, Desiree, she thought. Run away before it’s too late. Luke doesn’t love you. Don’t waste your best years with a man who’ll use you. Don’t make the same mistake I did. You’ve only been married two hours. You can get an annulment.
Could she say that? Helen took on a mother’s duties when she put on the bride’s veil. A good mother would tell her daughter to get out of this mess.
Helen was greeted at the dressing-room door by the bracing smell of hot coffee. The breakfast buffet had been cleared. Jeff had set out plates of chicken and cucumber sandwiches, and dainty cookies.
What tempted Helen was the fresh coffee warming on the burner. Coffee would give her courage. After a cup of caffeine, she could drop some hints to Desiree. If the bride seemed receptive, she’d mention an annulment. Helen draped the dropped veil over a chair and reached for the coffeepot.
“You don’t have time for that,” Desiree said. “I want this thing off. Now.”
So much for Helen’s maternal fantasies. She was a servant and she’d better not forget it.
Helen approached Desiree as though the bride were a rabid animal. She carefully swung the heavy cathedral train out of the way and began unbuttoning the wretched dress for the last time. Desiree wriggled impatiently. A button slipped from Helen’s grasp.
This poor bride has had a terrible day, Helen thought, then rebelled at her sudden attack of saintliness. She was not going to play Victorian maid to Lady Desiree.
“The more you move, the longer this will take,” Helen said.
She stopped unbuttoning until Desiree stood still. Emily the peacemaker came over with coffee and cookies for the bride. That seemed to calm her.
Helen finished the last button and said, “There, you’re free. Step out of this carefully so you don’t get scratched.”
“Are you going to preserve your wedding dress?” said Amy, one of the dumber blond bridesmaids.
“So I can always remember this day?” The bride tore the dress from Helen’s hands, but that didn’t satisfy her fury. With one swift movement, Desiree grabbed the coffeepot and hurled it at the dress. Coffee splashed and shattered glass flew across the floor. A bridesmaid screamed.
“What are you doing?” Amy was shocked. “You could at least give that dress to charity.”
“So another woman can be as miserable as I am?” Desiree said. “Throw it in the trash.”
Emily bundled the ruined gown into a trash bag and hauled it out of sight. Jeff mopped up the spilled coffee and swept away the broken glass. The bridesmaids were afraid to say anything.
Desiree stood in her pure white La Perla underwear, showing off her slender body in a way that reminded Helen of Kiki. Desiree stretched like a cat, then started talking as if her seven-thousand-dollar tantrum never happened. “That dress hurt my back and shoulders. What do you think it weighed?”
“About twenty-five pounds, plus the train,” Helen said. “Why don’t you rest a moment or have a sandwich?”
“No, I want to put on my real wedding dress,” Desiree said. “The beautiful one. That ceremony was my mother’s idea. The reception is for my father’s business. But the afternoon cocktail party is mine. I’m going to have fun.”
I’m happy to help, Helen thought. Once the bride was buttoned into her fabulous cobweb dress, Helen could leave. She forgave Desiree her strange, sudden flash of temper. Maybe in her case, rage was a healthy response. Helen didn’t much care. She wanted to sit by the Coronado pool with a book and some wine. She could feel the cold glass in her hand and the warm sun on her hair.
“Terrific,” Helen said. “I’ll get your dress out of the closet.”
The door was stuck, a common phenomenon in the Florida humidity. Helen pulled on the handle and felt a weight behind it. The door was jammed.
It was that blasted hoop skirt. Helen knew she shouldn’t have shoved the rose dress into that closet with Desiree’s precious cobweb wedding dress. Now the door was caught. If she ripped that dress, Kiki would tear her heart out.
Helen’s arms were strong from hauling heavy wedding dresses. She pulled harder on the door. It wouldn’t budge.
“What’s keeping you?” Desiree tapped her foot impatiently.
“The door’s stuck.”
“Let’s get Jeff,” the bride said.
Helen didn’t want Jeff to see the rose dress squashed in the closet. He might report her to Kiki.
“Just needs a little old-fashioned female force.” Helen tugged harder. Nothing happened.
She would not be defeated by a lousy door. Not when a cold glass of wine was calling. Helen gave the door a mighty yank.
It opened.
Out tumbled a waterfall of red-black taffeta, yards and yards of it, tucked and folded into a giant bouquet. The rose dress must have fallen off the hanger—and fallen into something. It sure didn’t smell like roses.
The slippery dark fabric was wrapped around logs. Then Helen saw the logs were legs, shapely legs ending in size-four heels. She heard screams and realized they were coming from her.
She’d found Kiki.
The missing mother of the bride slid out of the closet in the rose dress. Helen couldn’t see her face. It was covered with a white cobweb. Helen pushed it aside.
Kiki stared blindly at Helen. Her mouth was open and angry, her eyes were wide and cold. She was dead, smothered with her daughter’s marvelous wedding dress.
“Oh, no,” the bride wailed. “Oh, no, no. I loved that dress.”
That’s when Rod the chauffeur burst into the room.
“Has anyone seen Kiki?” he said.
Chapter 7
“Ewww,” Amy said. “What’s wrong with her nails?”
Nails? What nails? Kiki looked like a big, stiff doll. Helen didn’t even notice her fingers.
She felt strangely warm and disconnected, as if she were wrapped in cotton.
Shock, said one side of her mind.
Shit, said the other. I’m never going to get that cold wine.
There were shrieks and screams as a dozen cell phones simultaneously called 911.
Only Amy, the airhead bridesmaid, noticed the dead woman’s manicure. “Her nails are too short.” Amy’s gray eyes were wide with horror. For her, a broken nail was a tragedy. Murder was unthinkable.
Kiki’s small curled fingers seemed pathetically child-like. The gold daggerlike nails were gone. They’d been cut to the quick. Why would she mutilate her manicure?
She didn’t, Helen realized. Kiki would never do her own nails. She’d have a manicurist come to her house the morning of the wedding.
This morning. A thousand years ago.
The curled fingers no longer looked sad. They looked creepy. Anyone who watched TV knew about DNA. If Kiki had scratched her killer, she’d have traces of the DNA under her nails. Her killer had cut them before she—or he—shoved the body in the closet.
Then I opened the door, Helen thought, and left my prints all over it. She felt sick.
Run! she told herself. T
he police will be here any minute. Everyone heard me fight with Kiki last night. With my past, I haven’t a chance.
Helen looked around frantically for her purse. She could slip out the side door before the police arrived.
Stay! said her rational side. You’re a servant who opened the wrong closet. Nobody noticed you. Nobody cares about you. Sit tight. Of course your prints are on that door. You’re supposed to help the wedding party.
“Somebody help me turn her over,” Brendan said. “I want to look for wounds.”
The father of the bride—and a lawyer—was tampering with a crime scene, but nobody said anything. The groom and the best man rushed over to help. Helen thought she saw Chauncey’s too-red lips form a fleeting smile before he assumed a properly solemn expression. He had reason to smile. His theater was saved. Kiki’s untimely death brought him a hundred thousand dollars.
Chauncey, Brendan, and Luke had trouble lifting the unwieldy body in the outrageous belled skirt. Helen saw the skirt had a huge rip on the side. The stitching had given way in spots, and the roses bulged like tumors.
“Give us a hand here,” Brendan called. Another groomsman, Jason, pushed forward to lift Kiki. The men looked like high-class undertakers in their formal black tuxes.
Terrific, Helen thought. The crime scene was contaminated by the four chief suspects. Make that five. Rod the chauffeur was holding the cobweb dress.
No, six. Desiree grabbed the dress out of his hands. “What are you doing with your filthy paws on my wedding dress?” she said.
“I had to get it out of the way or someone would step on it.” Rod did not sound quite so deferential now that he was a millionaire.
“Don’t touch anything of mine.” Desiree, now wrapped in an oversized white robe, looked shrunken and older than her mother.
As the four men turned over the body, the hoop skirt flipped up, exposing Kiki’s bare bottom.
“No gunshot or stab wounds on the backside,” Brendan said coldly.
Jason seemed to be suppressing a smirk. Luke looked poleaxed by this new view of his mother-in-law. Good thing he didn’t see the golden dollar sign on the other side, Helen thought.
“OK, let’s put her back the way we found her,” Brendan said.
Fat chance, Helen thought. She surveyed the chaos in the room. The staff was standing against the walls, trying to make themselves invisible. The hairstylists held silent dryers. The makeup artists put down their brushes. Even Jeff looked lost. He had no plan for this wedding emergency.
In the center of the room, the bride shed bitter tears into the magical cobweb dress she would never wear. “It’s ruined. It’s all ruined,” she cried, and wiped her eyes on the gossamer skirt.
Whether Desiree was weeping over her wedding, her marriage, or her dress, Helen didn’t know. She certainly wasn’t crying for her mother.
“She didn’t have the decency to die in her underwear,” Desiree said. “She mooned everyone.”
Amy started giggling wildly. Bridesmaid Beth gave her a sharp elbow in the ribs, and she shut up.
The bride shook with shame and fury. The groom patted her back with the same hand that had held her dead mother. His touch was tentative, as if he expected his bride to sprout leathery wings and scales. Luke had the devil’s own luck on his wedding day. His vicious mother-in-law was dead—and her fortune went to his new wife.
The father of the bride barked into his cell phone, “I don’t care! Get his ass off the golf course and get him over here right now.” Brendan strutted back and forth, a short, energetic general calling in reinforcements.
The blond bridesmaids cried and clung to one another. Their black dresses were no longer symbols of sophistication. They were mourning clothes.
“I’ll never wear this dress again,” Beth said sadly, “and it’s a Vera Wang.”
“I’ve never seen a real dead person before,” Amy said. “She looks gross.”
No one went near Kiki. That made her death even lonelier. Helen thought she looked oddly pretty with her gray-green skin, blond hair, and dark rose dress. As long as you didn’t look too closely at the popped eyes speckled with red pinpoint petechiae.
Poor Kiki. She seemed so small in death. Helen remembered what Millicent had said. “If she were a man, would you notice her outrageous behavior?” The heart of a Hollywood mogul had been trapped in that little body.
All eight groomsmen crowded into the room. Helen felt as if the air had been sucked out of the place. She leaned against the wall next to a silent hairstylist, and hoped everyone would keep quiet until the police arrived. But the drama wasn’t over.
Lisa, looking like Nemesis in her black bridesmaid dress, marched straight up to Jason. Her brown eyes were electric with malice. “Since you were the last one to see Kiki alive last night,” she said, “maybe you can tell the police who killed her.”
Jason’s handsome face took on a feral look. “You’re crazy,” he said. “I left the restaurant with everyone else.”
“And waited for her in your car,” Lisa said.
Everyone in the room stared at her. Last night Jason, her sometime escort, had humiliated her. Today she was getting her revenge. “I heard Kiki tell the chauffeur to go on without her after the rehearsal dinner because you would take her home.”
Jason’s voice was a knife. “Here’s what I heard: You went home alone. Nobody wants a bitch like you.”
“Quiet! Both of you,” the father of the bride said. “Nobody talks to the police without a lawyer. I’ve called in some favors. Friends of mine in the legal community are on their way.”
Now Helen understood Brendan’s frantic cell phone calls.
Lisa was outraged. “You’re getting lawyers for the wedding party? Do you want your wife’s killer to get away?”
“Ex-wife,” he corrected. “And our kind are not killers.”
Helen suddenly realized the offer of attorneys did not extend to the help. The staff was being set up to take the rap. One makeup artist turned so pale her foundation looked like a beige mask.
Helen began edging toward the door. She would run if she was going to be a scapegoat.
“Where are you going?” Brendan snapped his cell phone shut.
“I need some air,” Helen said. “I feel faint.”
“Open a window, somebody,” Brendan commanded. “You! Sit down and put your head between your knees.”
And kiss my rear end good-bye, Helen thought. They’re going to pin this on me for sure. She felt trapped. There was no way she could make it to the door.
“I know you. You had the fight with my wife last night,” Brendan said.
“Ex-wife,” Helen said. “Everybody had a fight with her last night, including you.”
“But your fight was special,” Brendan said. “She threatened to fire you. You killed her to keep your job.”
Helen laughed, although she was so frightened it sounded wobbly. “You think I killed her for six-seventy an hour? I’d make more money stamping license plates in prison. At least there my living expenses would be covered.”
She thought it was a good bluff. Now she attacked. “I can always get another low-paying job. But what about you? Kiki was after your last nickel. The cops will check your bank records and see you’re headed for bankruptcy and Kiki was demanding more money each day. I heard her.”
Brendan’s eyebrows shot up. Helen knew she’d scored. She tried another thrust. “And your daughter had a few fights with her mother.” As soon as she said that, Helen knew she’d made a mistake.
“You leave my daughter out of this.” Brendan’s voice was low and dangerous. His face was a weird wine red. Brendan didn’t love Desiree, but he wouldn’t let an inferior attack anything that was his.
“Shut up,” Desiree shouted. “Everyone shut up.”
Helen could hear the sirens now, howling like lost souls outside the church.
“The Sunnysea police are here.” Amy was never afraid to state the obvious. “And a bunch of gray guy
s are getting out of Beemers. Are those the lawyers?”
Brendan looked out the window. “Yes,” he said. “Now remember, everyone. No talking unless the lawyers say it’s okay.”
But it was much too late for that.
Chapter 8
“Listen here, Detective, I know Bob Cambridge. Do you know who he is?”
Brendan, the father of the bride, was swollen with self-importance. He looked like a lovesick frog.
Detective Janet Smith neatly deflated him. “The person you really need to know is me. I’m the detective in charge of this investigation. Senator Bob Cambridge trusts me to get the job done right.”
Detective Smith whipped out her cell phone. “But if you’d like to talk with him, I can call his private number right now.”
Brendan did not take her phone. He backed away slightly and ran his hands through his hair. Helen saw he had a small bald spot.
“No, no, that’s not necessary.”
“Good. Then take off your shoes. We need them for comparison to the shoe prints we’ll find at the crime scene. We’ll be using an electrostatic dust print lifter.”
Helen bit her lip to hide a smile. She wondered if Detective Smith had the senator’s number—or just Brendan’s. She’d pulled a few bluffs like that herself. Smith was all business, but Helen thought the detective enjoyed ordering around the pompous Brendan.
“I don’t see—” Brendan started to say.
“I know you don’t see,” she said. “You also didn’t see anything wrong with moving the body and disturbing the crime scene, although you are an attorney and an officer of the court. You do realize that has complicated the case, sir? It’s going to take longer now to find the killer. It makes you look suspect.”
Smith sounded sad rather than angry, as if Brendan was one more burden she had to bear.
Brendan started blustering. “Young woman, are you accusing me of murder? I demand to see my attorney.”
“I’m stating a fact. We cannot have any more people contaminating this crime scene.”