by Nancy Bush
“Renee came up from Santa Monica. On that Friday? Or earlier?”
“Earlier, I think. You’d have to ask her. I don’t remember.”
“So, the rehearsal dinner was the first event where people gathered…most of the family and friends.”
“Gigi had some luncheons or something earlier in the week, I think,” Melinda said with a shrug, losing interest. “Of course, we all got to see each other all over again at the memorial service. Renee was there. I think she sent her friend back and just stayed on. Gigi was a wreck and Sean was utterly useless. I had to make the arrangements, and it was really, really hard. I called the Lake Chinook Country Club and they put on the event, but I had special items brought in from Blackbird Pie Catering. They make bite-size tomato tarts that are indescribable. Everybody just loved them.”
She fell silent, recalling happier moments. I hadn’t even thought about a funeral or memorial service for Roland. Violet hadn’t mentioned any, and I wondered if she’d even attended. Maybe she’d missed the memo. She was outside the family and friends loop, and everyone thought she was guilty of killing him. Not exactly party guest number one on the list.
I quizzed Melinda on the schedule of events on the wedding day. She gave the time she arrived at both Castellina and the winery, and how she and Deenie had stalwartly held Gigi’s hands when the search for Roland began. Beyond that, she didn’t have much more to add. She started looking at her watch and I realized my interview was over, so I rose to my feet and thanked her for everything before she got antsy and pushed me out the door. Better to leave on a high note, just in case you need something more later.
“Would you like to take these with you?” she asked, indicating the six leftover hors d’oeuvres.
“Are you sure?”
“Oh, I’m making dozens more.” She grabbed a disposable plastic tub and carefully arranged the crescents inside, adding dabs of chutney to their toasted tops. Then she snapped on a blue plastic lid and handed it to me. I thanked her and she said, “Maybe you’d like to join us at the neighborhood get-together. It’s at the Village Shopping Center the Saturday before Thanksgiving.”
“Definitely,” I said.
At the door, she had one more interesting thing to add. “Now that you’ve met Gigi, what do you think of her?” she asked as I gauged the distance to my car and the extent of rain that would drench me as I hurried to the driver’s door.
“Well…”
Melinda smiled faintly. “Gigi doesn’t think much of anyone besides Gigi. I’ve asked myself a thousand times what Emmett sees in her. Maybe she’s a good lay.”
Those last words ran around in my head all the way back to the cottage. Melinda was so tidy and precise, the phraseology seemed oddly crude for her. Her feelings for Gigi didn’t appear all that far from her feelings for Violet.
I spent the next several days filling in my timeline, reviewing my impressions, wondering if I was wasting everyone’s time and money. In this I wasn’t sure I cared. Violet was paying and didn’t appear overly concerned about the cost.
I did a bit of uneventful process-serving, uneventful except for the barrage of epithets thrown at me from a heavyset man who shook a brass candlestick at me he happened to have in his hand when I served him the eviction notice. I kept my eye on the candlestick, worried he might chuck it at me, but apparently he considered it too valuable and just kept up the four-letter words as I retreated to my car.
Sticks and stones, buddy. Sticks and stones.
I put in calls to Renee Hatchmere and David and Goliath Popparockskill, but none of them answered and by Friday not one of them had returned my call. David and Goliath lived in southeast Portland, on the east side of the Willamette and far enough from downtown to make me think of visiting them as a “trip.” I also tried calling Deenie again to no avail. I figured she’d give me the same information as the rest of the wedding party bridesmaids and groomsmen: the color scheme sucked, the wedding cancellation sucked, the bachelor party rocked, Roland’s death sucked.
Okay, the best man had had a few other things to say as well. I caught an inkling of his feelings regarding the bride when he referred to Gigi as a “hysterical, whining train wreck.” Yes, I’m quick to pick up on these seemingly benign comments. Being the clever investigator I am, I told James it sounded like he was happy the wedding never came off and James very succinctly said Emmett’s head was up his ass because Junie-Marie, his last girlfriend, was the most lovely, sweet, voluptuous, down-to-earth woman in the world. Junie-Marie? I asked. Named after her grandmother June Marie, I learned. Junie-Marie’s only problem appeared to be that she did not enjoy the Hatchmere wealth. James thought that was a poor excuse indeed to throw her over for the wealthy, bitchy, vicious, skinny, ugly Gigi Hatchmere.
Gigi wasn’t ugly, and she wasn’t really skinny. I wasn’t certain about the vicious part, either, but I pretty well concurred with James on the wealthy and bitchy parts. I asked how to contact Junie-Marie, which made James highly suspicious of my intentions. He told me he didn’t have that information at hand, but promised to get it for me later. Like, oh, sure. I had a feeling he was the kind that spoke loudly and freely, then wished he could cut out his own tongue later.
All of this background material was interesting. Maybe some of it might actually have some meaning someday. I wrote it up in a report for Dwayne, making sure all pertinent information was recorded.
Violet called me daily. I’d given her Sharona’s name in case she needed an attorney any time soon, but so far she hadn’t called her. I think she had her fingers crossed that the court wouldn’t indict and she wouldn’t need representation. I kind of thought it would be good to get Sharona up to speed just in case, but then I don’t have a lot of faith in innocent until proven guilty.
Friday dawned gray and bleak and wet. It dampened my spirits, so to speak, and the thought of meeting Dawn and company at Do Not Enter in this weather sounded like a total drag.
I ran to the Coffee Nook in the rain, cinching the hood of my blue windbreaker so tightly that only my eyes, nose and mouth were exposed to the elements. Even so I thought I could drown before I blew inside with a gust of wind that caused everyone standing by the door to shriek with surprise and irritation.
“Shut the damn door!” Chuck growled.
I was trying to do just that but it took some effort. One of the other regulars helped me thrust back the wind, just as another customer blew in with the same wildly flinging door entrance.
“What a bunch of idiots,” Chuck said, dolefully shaking his head. My interest in knowing him slid even further down the scale into negative numbers. He added the icing to the cake by asking me, “Do you always wear the same thing?”
“I try.”
“Oh. Did I offend you? Sorry.” He tried to look apologetic but it appeared more like a smirk.
There was a girl in my high school who allegedly, every month, mapped out what she would wear to school each day for that month, just so she wouldn’t repeat herself on what was apparently a popularity-killing offense. I never saw the point of this and wore whatever the hell I felt like. I consequently was not elected to any high school court, nor was I hugely popular with members of the male sex, so maybe there was some validity to her obsession. My noteworthy high school achievement was burning the cinnamon rolls in Home Ec class and setting the overhead sprinklers off from the boiling smoke that filled the room. So, okay, I thought they weren’t getting done fast enough and I figured five hundred degrees was a better option. The sugar carmelized, blackened and turned the rolls into charred hockey pucks. Though I was willing to take the blame, my Home Ec partner, Michele, jumped in and said it was all her fault before I could fess up. At the time I was taken aback, but as I watched the events unfold I learned Michele loved to be the center of attention, either bad or good. She apologized contritely to the administration and teachers and said she would do whatever needed to be done to make it right, all the while slyly smiling at her friends when no one
was looking, who in turn thought she was the coolest. Nothing ever bothered her. I helped her on the cleanup but she really didn’t care. She thought the world was one big joke and enjoyed her own niche of back-asswards popularity because of it. I think there’s a lesson in there somewhere, but what I really came away with is that baking’s a lot trickier than it looks.
Billy Leonard was seated on one of the Coffee Nook’s stools, so I slid onto the one next to him. Billy is one of those guys who looks like he was meant for pickup trucks, rusted fishing trawlers and evenings spent with cheap cigars and long yarns. Surprisingly, he’s a CPA. I find I learn a lot from Billy although he made an allusion to the fact that we were raising our kids as “hatchery fish,” coddling them, not preparing them for the harsh realities of life, which had me worried about my own abilities a few months back. I’ve come to peace with that, pretty much, now that I’m working for Dwayne. I’m pretty sure now I’m not a hatchery fish.
Billy was drinking coffee and talking to some of the people across the way. He said in an aside to me, “Chuck’s the fashion police now?”
We both looked over at Chuck’s wrinkled slacks and gray pullover. There was a tiny moth hole near the underarm where we got a peek of his white undershirt. “Billy, if I asked you about one of your clients’ net worth, would you tell me?”
“That wouldn’t be ethical.”
“So that’s a no?”
“Who are you trying to find out about?”
I shrugged. “Roland Hatchmere, I guess.”
“He’s not my client. And I hear he’s dead. What do you mean, you guess?”
“I was thinking about the Wedding Bandits. How they pick their targets. I mean, sure there are engagement and wedding announcements that list the venues and dates, so I guess it could be pretty easy to know where the ceremony’s going to be, but how do you know who has the money? And how do you know where they live?”
I hadn’t really realized I’d been thinking in these terms. Sometimes the mind is a strange and fabulous thing, working, sorting, plotting while we sleep, or watch TV, or play with our dogs. Seeing Billy, thinking about his job, had sent my mind down the financial path and I slammed into the Wedding Bandits without thinking.
“You know Dr. Hatchmere of Hatchmere Plastic Surgery has money because you just know,” Billy said. “Read the paper.”
“How do you know where he lives?”
Billy shrugged. “You follow him home from work one day.”
I nodded. That was as good an answer as any.
The thought circled my mind as I jogged back to the cottage. I was still thinking it as I stripped off my wet clothes and headed for the shower. As soon as I was toweled off and in dry jeans, my brown boots and a black, ribbed V-neck sweater, I phoned Dwayne on his cell. “Hullo,” he greeted me, sounding distracted.
“Does your buddy Larrabee know how the robbery victims are targeted?”
“He’s not keeping me in that loop.”
“Could it be that the bandits just follow the primary target home from work? Like Roland. It wouldn’t be hard to figure out who he is.”
“Sure.”
I could tell I wasn’t quite engaging him and it kind of pissed me off. “Am I keeping you from your binoculars?”
“The damn rain’s keeping me from my binoculars,” he groused. “You wanna meet Larrabee?”
That stopped me. “Yes.”
“I’ll give him a call. See if I can set something up. I wanna know what’s going on with that investigation, too.”
I could hear the frustration in his voice, which I thought was a good sign. Dwayne had seemed way too relaxed for far too long, so I inwardly cheered the dissatisfaction. “Great,” I said.
I told him that I’d added to my written report and I mentioned my meeting with Melinda. Dwayne asked me if I had any apple bars left over. I visualized the two sitting on a plate in my refrigerator, silently mourned the loss, and generously told Dwayne I would bring them over to him.
“That hurt, didn’t it?” he said, barely holding back a laugh.
“I get one and you get one.”
“Get over here, then.”
Something about his warm tone got to me. I assured him I would be there, then got off the phone and looked at The Binkster. She cocked her head, ready for a deep discussion.
“Let’s not go there now.” I went to the refrigerator and pulled out the plate of apple bars. I felt slightly guilty that I hadn’t mentioned Melinda’s fabulous hors d’oeuvres at all. This was mainly because they never made it into my refrigerator. I pretty much took care of them on the ride home that day and their existence didn’t make it into my report, either written or oral. But I’d hoarded the apple bars and sharing was the price I would pay.
Dwayne was standing in his kitchen when I arrived, and I did the proverbial double take. “You’ve got a new cast on.” I set the plate on the counter and gave him the once-over. The full-length cast had been replaced by what looked like wrapped splints and Dwayne was in tattered denim cutoffs, revealing the tight, damn near fused bandage holding the pieces in place around his right thigh and across his knee. His attire suggested a sunny day on the lake. Like in August.
“Violet drove me to the doctor,” he said.
Pissed me off to no end. As many times as Violet called me on the phone, had she once mentioned this? Oh, sure. I “have mine.” It certainly didn’t look as if she was giving up on Dwayne completely any time soon.
Dwayne’s way too aware of mood to let my silence go un-remarked. “Didn’t want to disturb you,” he said in his drawl. “You were meeting Roland’s wife the time of my appointment. Violet stopped by so I asked her for the favor.”
And she was happy to help. I didn’t say it. I didn’t say anything at all.
Dwayne chose to ignore further comment on the issue and eyed the two apple bars. “Should we nuke ’em?”
“Go ahead.”
He put the plate in the microwave and we both watched the apple bars spin around for a minute as if we would be tested later on how they turned out. We ate them in silence and mine could have been sawdust for all the attention to flavor it presented, but Dwayne smacked his up. “God, those are good,” he said with real admiration.
I shook myself out of my mood with an effort. This is exactly why I don’t want to feel anything for Dwayne. I don’t want to be driven crazy, and though nothing—nothing—has transpired between us of a serious nature, certainly of a sexual nature, it’s already affecting my sanity.
“Did you talk to Larrabee?” I asked.
“Left a message on his voice mail. He hasn’t gotten back to me yet.”
“It’s an epidemic,” I grumbled, explaining that I, too, had left messages all over the place that hadn’t been returned yet.
“He’ll get in touch with you,” Dwayne assured me. “When he does, offer to buy him lunch. Or dinner.”
Dwayne’s suddenly careful tone caught my attention. “Something you’re not telling me about Detective Larrabee?”
“Be careful of him,” he said with a faint smile.
“Oh, great. Why?”
“I’ve known him a long time. He’s—thorough.”
“Meaning?”
He shook his head. “The guy has a lot of levels. You’ll be fine. Women love him.”
Like they love you? I turned away from him. Nope. I was not going to go there. “You lost your little red heart with the initials,” I pointed out, gesturing to his cast.
“Darlene’s eight-year-old’ll probably be upset.”
“Your cleaning lady’s daughter?”
“Yeah. Why? Who’d you think drew it?”
I decided a change of subject was in order. “I’m going over to Do Not Enter tonight. Gotta meet Dawn.”
“Darlin’, don’t go if you don’t want to,” Dwayne drawled. “It’s rainin’ buckets out there.”
“Oh, don’t give me that.”
“What?”
“The ‘aw, shu
cks, it’s no big deal’ act. You started this, Hal Jeffries. I’m just along for the ride.”
He smiled. Then he picked up his cell phone and placed a call. “Call me,” he said and clicked off. “Larrabee,” he told me. “Might as well keep after him.”
I nodded and glanced out to the darkening sky. Though I wanted to rail about it, I really felt the same way about Dawn and the kids at Do Not Enter. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I figured I could make another appearance before ratting them out. “Any ideas how to make myself look younger tonight?”
“Show more skin.”
I gazed at his tattered shorts. “It’s November and the weather is crap.”
“Doesn’t stop ’em. The girls wear skimpy tops under their jackets. Always showin’ off a bare shoulder or a patch of skin at the waistline. They hook up and disappear with one of the guys, come back all bundled up again.”
“I’ve got a V-neck on. That’s as bare as it goes.”
“You asked.”
“And how am I getting compensated for this, again?”
“I’m paying your rates. Don’t worry about it.”
I shivered involuntarily. “Thanks, but I’ve got a sweatshirt that should do the trick.”
Five hours later, I drove toward Beachlake Drive wearing Glen’s Lake Chinook sweatshirt, which I’d washed and dried and shrunk some. The hem had crept up a little, but the sleeves still looked like they’d fit an orangutan and the shirt’s width was wide enough to fit two of me. I’d brought my anorak but it was in the backseat. Rain or no, I wanted to show up in the sweatshirt.
I found a parking spot a bit farther away this time, closer to the dead end of the road, as there were quite a few more cars parked along the road’s narrow shoulder. Apparently there was a bigger group tonight.
I gazed at my reflection in the rearview mirror. Tonight I’d snapped my hair into a ponytail, my usual jogging style, and I’d added more makeup than I can usually stomach. I’d really laid it on thick. Makeup’s supposed to make you look older, but I tried to kind of dumb it down, like I really didn’t know what I was doing, to make it appear that this whole makeup thing was new to me. This meant the eyeliner was a teensy bit crooked and the mascara was on both my upper and lower lashes and thick enough to be the great, greater, greatest! lashes of all time. I looked like a reject from a Maybelline commercial, eyelashes sprouting all around my hazel irises, giving me a surprised look. When coupled with a vacant stare, I was pretty pleased with the results. Still, high school would be a stretch to most anyone who saw me in the light of day. Do Not Enter’s uncertain illumination was a definite plus.