Larabee’s posture was rigid, his voice was grating, and his wiry gray hair seemed to coil furiously above his pinched and resentful face. As B.J. and I sat in his office, I noticed a photo on the desk of a high-school boy posing proudly with a cello, apparently at a recital. He was slim and blond, and very handsome in an elfin sort of way. Must take after his mother.
There was nothing elfin about the chief’s left eye, which blinked and jumped and quivered to a hypnotic degree. It was difficult not to stare, especially while I was busy lying. But even in shock, even in a police station in the middle of the night, I knew enough to trot out my story about scouting for the bachelor party. And to keep mum about Julie Nothstine’s theory that Brian Thiel was murdered. Partly because I’d promised her I would, but mostly because I knew how bizarre it would sound.
And Dr. Nothstine might be wrong, anyway. Once in the past I’d told the police more than I meant to, thus putting an innocent man and his family through hell, and I had no desire to repeat the experience. But I didn’t think she was wrong.
“A bachelor party?” grated Larabee. He said it as though he’d never heard anything so outrageous in his life, but apparently that’s how he said almost everything. “Why on God’s green earth would you have a bachelor party at the smoke-jumper base?”
“Because Sam Kane’s son-in-law is a smoke jumper,” said B.J. easily. B.J. is a beautiful liar, and she drops names with the best of them. “The wedding’s Saturday up at White Pine—you know, Sam’s new resort? But maybe you haven’t heard about it.”
“Of course I have!” Larabee sat up even straighter, if that was possible. “So the two of you heard someone moving around in the parachute loft, but you didn’t see them? What about voices? Could you tell how many there were, men or women, anything?”
I shook my head. “Just footsteps, but it sounded like a single person.”
“Doubtful,” he huffed. “These junkies are different than most, they’re working as a gang.”
“Junkies in Ketchum?” I said. Larabee and B.J. both stared at me, the naïve city slicker. “I mean, it’s such a small town, somehow I thought—”
“Drugs are a serious problem in rural areas,” said Larabee, his eye shimmying double time. “Mostly heroin and methamphetamines, though we don’t see a lot of meth labs in Blaine County. It’s usually imported. We’ve had a string of robberies lately, addicts looking for cash and goods they can pawn for cash. Last week a computer-store guard in Hailey was severely beaten, almost died. Lots of computers at the smoke-jumper base.”
Aha. No wonder he accepted my story, with a crime wave already in progress. This homicidal assault fit right in with it. Larabee had us sign our statements and then informed us that our vehicles had been ferried into town by a patrolman. The clear implication was that we should get into said vehicles and go away. So we did.
Back at the house, B.J. erupted out of her car and slammed the door. “Carnegie, what the hell is going on? Did you say Brian’s killer? I didn’t mention that to Howard, but—”
“Good,” I said, fumbling with my key, irrationally anxious to get inside. The lasagna smell still hung in the air, domestic and comforting. “Because I don’t want to tell them, not yet.”
B.J. was right on my heels. “But why—?”
“Long story. Hang on.” I made straight for the kitchen, picked up the stool I’d knocked over, and tugged open the fridge. As I did so I observed, as if from a long, muffled distance, that my hands were trembling. In fact, all of me was trembling. Delayed reaction. Interesting. I scanned the shelves. Beer, two-percent milk, beer, V8, beer. “Don’t you have any wine?”
“In the door. Here, let me get it. You go sit down.”
B.J. produced a bottle and a couple of mismatched glasses, and soon I was curled in a corner of her couch, swigging cheap Chardonnay and breathing deeply. She waited a few moments, topping me up, before she spoke.
“Better now?”
I swallowed and nodded. “Much.”
“Good. Now tell me everything, right from the beginning. What have you been doing all day?”
So I told her, touching lightly on Cissy’s lunch and Shara Mortimer’s dismissal, and even more lightly on Jack’s behavior up at White Pine. What I related at length was Dr. Nothstine’s theory about Brian’s murder, the impromptu dinner party at her trailer, and my indecision about Todd Gibson as a possible suspect.
“He’s such a likable guy, but you should have seen his face when he screamed at the cat. And if he didn’t do it, then either Danny or the Tyke—”
“For God’s sake, Carnegie!” B.J. broke in. “These people are smoke jumpers. They’re bonded together like family. You’ve heard them; they call each other ‘bro,’ the men and women both. ‘Bro’ as in ‘brother.’ For one jumper to kill another is just unbelievable.”
“Dr. Nothstine believes it. And if Brian’s death was an accident, then who killed that guard?” I realized, with a sick twist of guilt, that I hadn’t even asked the man’s name. “And might have killed me if you hadn’t come up the stairs when you did.”
We looked at each other wordlessly, then B.J. topped up both our glasses.
“Cheers, Muffy,” she said weakly.
“Cheers.” We sipped in silence for a while, and my mind strayed, irrelevantly, to her original quest. “Did you find Brian’s locker?”
“Yeah, but there’s a big old padlock on it.”
“I know. I’ve got the combination.”
“You do? Why didn’t you tell me? We could go back and...” Her face changed comically as she realized what she was saying, and why we weren’t going anywhere near the jumper base tonight. “I guess that’s not such a good idea.”
“Not so good, no.” I swigged more wine. I like wine much better than beer. “Actually, it’s a dreadful idea.”
Her snort turned into a giggle. “Horrible.”
“Appalling.”
“Atrocious.”
We were both giggling now, then laughing, uncontrollably, deliriously. I slumped farther into the couch and sloshed some wine on the cushions. B.J. relieved me of my glass and we both slumped over, cackling like madwomen. By the time we subsided I was half asleep. Talk about a long, strange trip. I heard B.J. getting up, then felt a blanket settle over me, light and soft.
Within seconds I was dead to the world. So to speak.
Chapter Fifteen
THAT WAS TUESDAY NIGHT. WITHIN HOURS—NOT NEARLY enough hours—it was Wednesday morning and I was at the Sun Valley Lodge, unlocking the Paliere suite and throwing a fit.
“A bee!” I stomped inside and whirled to face the remorseful young man who’d been drooping out in the hallway. “A bee?”
I heard myself sounding hysterical, but I couldn’t help it. I was a mess. I’d slept right through the alarm B.J. set for me when she left for work, and woke up on her couch in a panic less than half an hour before my big vendor meeting. No breakfast, no shower, and no time to react to the events of the night before. Which possibly wasn’t a bad thing. I had to think weddings, not murders, and I had to think fast.
A heavy foot on the gas brought me to the lodge with three minutes to spare—just enough to blow up.
“Valerie Cox is bailing out on this wedding because she got stung by a goddamn bee?”
“Please let me finish.” The remorseful young man was Wallace Waggoner, the tallest, thinnest, droopiest person I’d ever met. He looked even sleepier than I did, if that was possible. “Val is allergic to beestings. She went into anaphylactic shock, which brought on a minor heart attack. She’s still in the hospital.”
“Oh.” My fury collapsed like a leaking balloon. “Oh. So they sent you.”
“On the red-eye.” He dropped his carry-on bag off one skinny shoulder and onto the floor as if he wanted to join it there. “Could I please make some coffee? I came straight from the airport.”
“Of course. Make the whole pot, would you? There’ll be eight of us.”
The suit
e was set up for business, with a small conference table, a coffee urn, and a drawer full of pens and such bearing the lodge’s sunburst logo. As Wallace fussed with the coffee, I arranged a pad and pen at each place, along with my business card and a copy of the wedding-events timetable.
We’d need the air-conditioning later, but just now the room felt cool and a little stuffy. I pushed open a window and stood staring out at the terrace and the ice rink, blinking in the early sunshine and trying to get my head in the game.
Who was coming this morning, and what did I need to discuss with each one? Caterer, photographer, videographer, floral designer, the tent-and-rental man, the entertainment director. I was eager to confer with the latter, because Shara Mortimer’s paperwork contained not a single detail about music, as if a file had gone missing from the bundle she’d handed me.
Who else? Oh, the stylist, a woman from the studio who was apparently senior to both Hair and Makeup. Tracy had insisted on her presence today, since film and photos of the bridal party would be so widely distributed. Between the glare of publicity for my bride and the nightmarish scene last night, this was feeling less like a wedding and more like a made-for-TV movie.
I went on trying to focus on the meeting’s agenda, but my thoughts kept straying back to Brian. I was convinced now that Dr. Nothstine’s theory had merit. But why was he killed, and which of the three smoke jumpers had last seen him alive? Who had stalked me in the parachute loft, behind those silken walls?
Whoever it was, if I went to the police with my suspicions and the killer heard about it, I might be triggering even more violence. I felt dazed and paralyzed, and I wished I could talk to Aaron.
A knock on the door brought me up short. Wallace handed me a steaming mug and went to answer it. Good man. The rest of the vendors arrived all at once, increasing my sense of confusion. The well-groomed Englishwoman I pegged as the stylist turned out to be Joan, the tent-and-rental “man,” while the caterer and videographer were both stout, mustachioed men named Bob. At least I recognized the D. P., whose name was actually Evan. He was Tracy’s own director of photography from the TV show, and seemed to rank senior to Bob. Photo Bob, not Food Bob.
Well, I’d sort that out later. For now I took my place at the head of the table and addressed them as if everything were normal. I was shooting for friendly but confident, but it came out stiff and officious, at least at first.
“I’m Carnegie Kincaid, of Made in Heaven Wedding Design in Seattle, subcontracted for the moment to Paliere Productions. I’m an old friend of the bride’s, and as some of you may know, Shara Mortimer has handed over coordination of the Kane/Packard nuptials to me.”
By the looks exchanged across the table, no one was lamenting the change.
“I know you’re all busy,” I went on, “so thank you for taking the time to come this morning. We’re in the homestretch now, with the baseball game and bachelor party tomorrow, the rehearsal dinner and ice skating Friday night, and the ceremony itself on Saturday.”
“Don’t forget the bachelorette party,” said the stylist. She was a tiny but imperious Scandinavian named Ilsa, with a harsh throaty voice and a youthful, unlined face that contrasted with the silver of her geometrically cut hair. Either Ilsa was prematurely gray by a couple of decades, or she’d had some serious work done. Her smooth, blank expression reminded me of a beach after the tide has receded. “We need to talk about that after the meeting.”
“Fine,” I said. “Now, let’s take it from the top.”
As we worked our way through the timetable, I began to breathe easier. Some of these people had worked together before, and all of them knew what they were doing. As we reviewed the photography schedule, a businesslike but amiable spirit emerged, with suggestions offered and accepted, accommodations made for each vendor’s requirements, and a general understanding that with a TV star for a bride, this wedding had to be picture-perfect.
As Tracy had already told me, the smoke jumpers were keeping the bachelor party casual. So Food Bob would grill burgers and tap beer kegs, and Evan would take some candid photos. Shara had planned to supervise the setup and the cleanup, but that was all.
“Unless your friend the bride is including you in the baseball game,” said Joan, the tent-and-rental, in her plummy British accent. “I understand those gorgeous gentlemen from Los Angeles are in need of players. I wouldn’t mind joining that team.”
“I didn’t know the game was coed,” I said. Then I realized that the smoke-jumper team would include women, so the California contingent might also. “Is Tracy playing?”
“You’re joking,” intoned Ilsa, horrified. “She could break a nail, or receive a bruise, or—”
“Of course,” I said soothingly. “Silly question. Let’s move on to the menus, shall we?”
Food Bob smacked his lips in anticipation. He had a genial, folksy manner, and I scribbled myself a crib note that his mustache was brown and bushy, while Photo Bob’s was flat and black. Bad form to tell the photographer the sauce was too salty, or ask the chef for a shot of the bride’s uncle.
“The rehearsal dinner’s our really fancy meal,” said Bob. “We’ll have just a grill-to-order buffet kinda thing up at White Pine after the ceremony, and of course the wedding cake. Two of ’em, actually. Orange tiramisu with butter-cream frosting, and then a chocolate-chestnut groom’s cake with sugar-dipped champagne grapes and laurel leaves. They’ll be real good. ’Course, we’ll use powdered egg whites in the butter cream, to stabilize it in the heat.”
Real good? But any fears that maybe Bob wasn’t real sophisticated quickly vanished as he led us through his fancy meal. From the seared pheasant breast with wild cherry conserve, through the lamb chops in phyllo, to the roasted pears with pecorino cheese and the chocolate-chestnut mousse, we were in the hands of a master. I began to regret, bitterly, my lack of breakfast.
“What about the vegetarian guests?” I asked, to cover the rumbling of my stomach.
“Pepper-crusted salmon on a bed of leeks.”
“But that’s not vegetarian.”
“It ain’t meat!” he protested, all innocence.
I felt my blood pressure rising. “Bob, a lot of vegetarians don’t eat fish, either. In fact, vegans don’t—”
“Take it easy!” The bushy mustache stretched over a broad smile. “I was just jerking your chain. We got a strictly nonflesh, nondairy wild mushroom ragout with roasted asparagus and carved potatoes. It’s a beaut on the plate, you’ll see.”
Next up, among the general chuckles at Bob’s joke, was Sebastian, the entertainment director, an uber-hip and supercilious southern California type with thick black glasses and thin blond hair. He filled us in about the big-deal rock group he’d hired for the reception, tossing off the famous name as if it were routine.
“And for the ceremony, of course, we have the quartet.”
“What kind of instruments?” I asked, scribbling notes.
“What kind?” His eyes glittered behind the geeky glasses. “The Ladislaus Quartet plays string instruments. I thought everyone knew that, but apparently I was wrong. Dear me.”
“You’ve got the Ladislaus?” My favorite recordings in the world were the Ladislaus renditions of the Beethoven middle quartets. The prospect of hearing those celestial strings attending Tracy down the aisle was...a problem. “That’s wonderful, but if the wind comes up, those big pine trees in the meadow are going to generate a lot of noise.”
Noise is a tricky issue at an outdoor event. I’d learned that the hard way at a seashore wedding, and again at a ceremony in a Seattle park that turned out to be under a flight path for SeaTac Airport. But today my fears were groundless. This was show biz, and not only had Sebastian arranged to fly the quartet in from their world tour, he’d also made detailed arrangements for mikes, amps, cables, power supply, and even backup power.
“Satisfied?” he asked airily. “Once we’re done here I’m off to Cabo San Lucas for a client’s birthday gala, but I’ll be bac
k on Friday afternoon. If you can spare me?”
“We’ll get by. No problem.”
There seemed to be no problems at all, in fact, except the one created by Valerie Cox’s bloody bee. Wallace Waggoner, poor fellow, was the weak link at this wedding. He had the facts and figures down pat about the refrigerated semi-truck trailer full of cut flowers and the rental of nursery stock in tubs. But when it came to artistic vision, he was a washout.
The more I asked about decorating the tents and tables, the bridal arch and the guest chairs, the railings at the lodge and the porta-potties at the White Pine Inn, the clearer it became that Wallace was a born follower. He kept clutching his paperwork, stammering out broken phrases, and looking around as if Valerie would magically appear and save him from making decisions.
“We’ll discuss the flowers in more detail later,” I said at last, to put him out of his misery. And even later than that, I told myself, I’ll be back in Seattle telling Eddie funny stories about all this. Hold that thought.
As the meeting broke up, the thought of Seattle brought on thoughts of Aaron. I yearned to call him, just to talk through this tangle, but would he think Dr. Nothstine was nuts and I was overdramatizing? Still, a corpse is a corpse, and at the very least I deserved some sympathy for the shock I had suffered. Not that Aaron was all that good at sympathy. He’d probably just tease me about—
“Well?” Ilsa had bustled up to me, but I’d been staring vacantly over her head. “Well, what shall I put you down for?”
“What? Sorry, I was just...put me down for what?”
“For injections at the bachelorette party.”
“Injections?” I squeaked. Needles are not my friends. “What kind of party is it?”
“An afternoon at Peak of Pleasure,” she said impatiently. At least I assumed she was impatient, from her tone of voice. I couldn’t quite tell from her face. “The spa. Didn’t you get the invitation?”
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