The Diva Takes the Cake

by Davis, Krista

  Jen, an only child whose parents were certain they couldn’t have produced anything but gifted offspring, would be spending the summer in the country with my parents.

  “We’ll try,” I whispered back.

  Wanda threw herself at my father and leaned her head against his chest. “Paul, thank goodness you’re here.” Dad stiffened as though a snake had crawled up his leg. Mom rushed to his aid and delicately pried Wanda away, patting her reassuringly.

  I coaxed them into the kitchen, except for Jen, whom I sent upstairs to see her wedding finery so she would be out of hearing range. Nina fetched a bottle of rum from the den while I put on the kettle and explained what had happened.

  My mother cupped a hand over her mouth, her eyes enormous.

  Dad, always practical, said, “Let me get this straight. Craig didn’t tell your sister he’d been married before. And now his ex-wife is dead.”

  I poured boiling water over organic English Breakfast tea in a strainer on a Spode teapot and set it on the table. I added a sugar bowl, a creamer of milk, and coordinating mugs.

  Mom, in her tidy aqua blouse, pearls, and white skirt watched me, motionless and apparently deep in thought. Even Mochie couldn’t distract her as he wound against her legs.

  I set miniature fruit tarts, their glossy glaze shining over strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries, on a white serving platter, scattered chocolate-dipped strawberries among them, and set the platter on the kitchen table. I added forks, paper napkins in Hannah’s paler pink color, and more of the cheery pink dessert plates.

  Nina brought the rum and poured some into Wanda’s mug. Wanda reached out a deeply tanned, gnarled hand with blood-red nails and a ring on each finger, including her thumb. She tapped Nina’s wrist so that more rum spilled into her mug. With a wink at Nina, she said, “I’ve had a shock, dear.”

  Mom finally came around. “She was so upset about Craig marrying someone else that she killed herself.”

  It was hard for me to imagine that anyone could love Craig that much. Then again, Hannah had fallen for him and appeared determined to stick by him.

  Dad ran steady hands through his hair. “I suppose Hannah is Craig’s alibi?”

  “No one needs an alibi, Dad.” At least I hoped no one would.

  Nina glanced at me. “They had a spat and Craig took off in the car. Hannah was here in the kitchen with Sophie and me.”

  “Do you think he was gone long enough to . . . to . . .” I didn’t want to come right out and say it.

  Nina sat down and helped herself to a chocolate-covered strawberry. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Now, girls.” Mom’s brow furrowed. “Don’t jump to conclusions. Maybe Craig met his ex-wife and told her he loves Hannah and she was distraught.”

  Wanda rose and wandered around the kitchen. “I feel something here. Was the dead woman in your kitchen? I’m getting vibes.”

  Mom closed her eyes, and Dad looked at me with dread. I knew what they were thinking. Mars’s Aunt Faye had left us the house, and his mother was convinced that she could converse with Faye’s spirit in the kitchen. None of the rest of us had ever heard Faye. We’d chosen to keep Mars’s mother’s quirk a secret from Natasha, so I wasn’t about to spill the beans to her mother.

  Wanda peered at the photograph of Aunt Faye that hung on the stone wall surrounding the fireplace. “So this is the house my Natasha wanted so much. There are definitely spirits here.”

  The picture of Aunt Faye swung to a slant, and Wanda stepped back in alarm. “Did you see that?”

  Dad coughed. “It’s a draft.”

  “No, I feel it.” She shifted her shoulders uneasily and looked out the window. “I can’t see Natasha’s house from here. She must be devastated. You know how delicate she is.”

  I knew what a drama queen her daughter was.

  But my mother, who adored Natasha, said, “Poor Natasha. How odd that the woman would have chosen her yard.”

  Handing Wanda the phone, I suggested she let Natasha know she’d arrived.

  Mom blurted, “We’ll have to call off the wedding.”

  “You can’t do that when Natasha put so much effort into the wedding cake,” protested Wanda.

  Everyone seemed to be on different tracks of thought. A stranger had died and touched all of our lives. We should have been worried about her and why she’d chosen to take her life, but we couldn’t help thinking about how her death impacted us individually.

  A face with hair so blond it verged on white peered through the window in the kitchen door. Humphrey—painfully slender, almost delicate, and shy as a sparrow. Pale Humphrey had grown up with Natasha and me. Although I’d been oblivious, he claimed he’d had a crush on me during our school years which had somehow lasted through the decades. I’d managed to put him off by telling him I was involved with Wolf. It was a major exaggeration, but kinder than telling him I found him as exciting as elementary school paste. But that hadn’t stopped him from hanging around in the hope I would change my mind.

  Reluctantly, I opened the door. After a polite exchange with my parents and Wanda about his mother and her health, which was fine, thank you, he pulled me aside and whispered, “I need to speak with you privately.”

  I balked.

  “Sophie,” he insisted, “this is of vital importance.”

  Against my better judgment I let him tug me outside. We walked around to the grill, and I took the opportunity to see how my meat was progressing.

  “I was just picking up a body . . .”

  Goose bumps crawled along my arms at the thought. All in a day’s work for Humphrey, since he was a local mortician.

  “. . . and everyone was talking about Craig’s ex-wife. I thought I’d heard wrong. I couldn’t believe that something so terrible could happen to Hannah right before her wedding.”

  I concentrated on the meat, which was coming along nicely. The musky aroma of mesquite still wafted in the air above the grill.

  “Hannah’s in big trouble, Sophie.”

  I finally bothered to look at him.

  “Craig’s ex-wife didn’t kill herself. She was murdered.”

  SIX

  From “Ask Natasha” :

  Dear Natasha,

  I booked the most gorgeous place for my wedding, but they have a strict maximum on the number of guests. I have to whittle down the guest list, but I know some people won’t be able to come. Do I act like an airline and send more invitations than we have seats and hope some people won’t make it?

  —Overbooking in Orange

  Dear Overbooking,

  You don’t want empty seats on your fabulous day. I always create an A list and a B list. Send invitations to the A list first. As regrets arrive, move to the B list and send those invitations. That way, you never have to go over your maximum, but you’ll be sure to have a full house.

  —Natasha

  My hand slipped and hit the edge of the hot grill. I jumped back and blew on the red welt that sprang up on the back of my finger.

  “That can’t be. She kicked over the table.”

  Humphrey took a deep breath. “The marks on her neck run from front to back, like someone strangled her from behind. If she’d died from hanging herself, the marks would run sort of upward.”

  I steadied myself by holding on to a nearby chair. “Somebody killed her and then strung her up? How horrible. Why would anyone do that?” Even though I didn’t know Emily Beacham, I felt like someone had kicked the strength out of my legs. She seemed nice. Why would anyone kill her so brutally? I collapsed into the chair as the horrific implications became clear.

  Craig was the only one of us who knew Emily. We hadn’t even known of his previous marriage until shortly before her death. What a lucky break Hannah hadn’t married him. If he’d killed his first wife, he might not hesitate to murder the second. “You have to tell Hannah as soon as she comes home.”

  In spite of the warm June weather, I felt chills. The horror of Emily’s murder might have
saved Hannah. I took Humphrey’s milky-white hand and raced for the kitchen door. I’d promised not to butt in. I’d been determined not to interfere. But this was different. I had to save Hannah from Craig.

  I towed Humphrey back into the kitchen. Wanda and Nina had left, and Mom and Dad were discussing whether to call off the wedding. It would be best if they heard the bad news from Humphrey, whom they would see as a more neutral source of information. At my prodding, he shared what he’d learned.

  “Dear Lord!” Dad fell into a chair.

  Mom rested a calming hand on his shoulder. “He’s not going to hurt Hannah.”

  Dad stared at her in astonishment. “He managed to kill his ex-wife in broad daylight, Inga!”

  Always one to think the best of people, Mom said, “That can’t be. Craig . . .” She faltered and fell silent.

  But Dad wasn’t through. “I knew there was something wrong with that boy. Why can’t Hannah ever find a nice man?”

  Mom persisted, her face taut. “Let’s not be hasty. Even if she was murdered, that doesn’t mean Craig killed her.” She brushed an imaginary errant hair out of her face and said, “The three of us and Humphrey will keep our ears to the ground tonight. Wolf will be here, thank goodness, and we’ll tell him anything we learn. And now I believe I’ll make sandwiches. Panini, Humphrey?”

  I’d only recently come to realize what snoops my parents were. They had no qualms about eavesdropping. I figured I came to it naturally with snooping genes on both sides of the family.

  If it had been up to me, I would have canceled the wedding so fast that Craig’s comb-over would have flapped in the resulting breeze. Instead, my mother was making sandwiches, proving that I wasn’t the only member of the family who could eat no matter what happened.

  Mom looked at the boxes loaded with gift baskets that still cluttered the kitchen floor. “You’d better deliver these, Sophie. Even if we cancel the wedding, guests ought to get some small token for their efforts.” I figured she was right, so Dad helped me load them into my hybrid SUV and I left my parents and Humphrey behind to break the news to Jen and deal with the mayhem of Craig’s ex-wife’s dramatic death.

  Life went on as normal a few blocks away on King Street, in the heart of Old Town. I pulled into a loading zone in front of the hotel, and a bellman appeared as if by magic. When I explained about the gifts, he acted like he’d done it a million times before.

  I handed him a copy of the list of names and went inside to speak with the manager again. Just to be on the safe side. Two men and a woman waited at the front desk. The woman smiled at me. The shorter of the two men, small and wiry with a wizened face, spoke slowly, drawing out his words in a crackling voice. “Beacham. We checked in last night. Beacham, Beacham, Beacham. How many times do I have to tell you?”

  The clerk drew back. “I’m sorry, sir. I cannot just hand you a key card. Security regulations require that you show me identification.”

  Craig’s last name was Beacham. “Excuse me,” I said, “are you here for the wedding?”

  They looked at me like I had butted into their private business.

  “Yes.” The wiry guy drew the word out slowly. “Are you the bride?”

  The thought of marrying Craig made me queasy. “I’m the sister of the bride.” I leaned toward the desk clerk. “The Bauer-Beacham wedding. We have a block of rooms reserved at a special price.”

  “The sistah of the bride?” The chestnut-haired woman gushed in a nasal New Jersey accent. “Can you believe this?” She pushed the shorter man’s shoulder. “And you’re so adorable. Is your sister as adorable as you, honey? I’m Dawby, Craig’s cousin.”

  I would never have pegged her as a relative of Craig’s. Wearing a summer suit that screamed high fashion, she was loud and bubbly. She probably hated her prominent nose, but it suited her expressive face and wide mouth.

  “Dobby?”

  She nodded. “Dawwwwby.”

  The taller man wore a suit that must have been hand-tailored. It fit him perfectly, in spite of his considerable height, and imparted a distinctly European elegance. “Darby,” he said, “give somebody else a chance. I’m Craig’s Uncle Stan.” His voice came from a place low in his belly, deep and husky. “And this is his father, Robert.”

  His dad? Dear Lord, they’d decided to put aside whatever quarrel they had with Craig, and now they’d arrived just in time to hear that a former family member had been murdered.

  “It’s . . . wonderful that you decided to come.” Either they’d made the trip for nothing, or my mother would have a cow when she found out we had to add three guests to an already full guest list. I tried to remember the maximum capacity at Carlyle House.

  “Does Craig know you’re here?”

  Darby grinned, revealing perfect teeth that had surely been whitened. “We thought we’d surprise him.”

  The last person who’d said that hadn’t fared well. “He’ll be surprised, all right.”

  I gave them my address and directions to my house. “It’s an easy walk.” They would encounter the cops on my street, but somehow that didn’t seem like the right thing to say. Craig should be the one to break the bad news to them.

  “We’re having a dessert party tonight. Nothing fancy, just a come-as-you-are-when-you-arrive-in-town kind of thing. Oh, but you’re family now. You should definitely come for dinner beforehand.”

  Uncle Stan jumped at my offer. “We’ll be there.”

  The desk clerk handed Robert a key card, and as they walked toward the elevator, I wondered how many family holidays we’d be spending together.

  After a quick chat with the manager, I tipped the bellman for distributing our gift baskets and headed home, brimming with the news of Craig’s relatives but determined to keep it quiet so I wouldn’t ruin the surprise for Craig.

  Driving by rote, I slowed for a light. My mind still on Craig, it took a minute before I recognized the guy driving the car in the lane next to mine.

  I took a hard look.

  He flashed a wicked grin at me.

  If we hadn’t had trouble before, it had just arrived.

  SEVEN

  From “THE GOOD LIFE ONLINE”:

  Instead of spending a fortune on cut flowers, consider ordering plants from your local nursery. Live plants in elegant urns or darling buckets provide the same splash of color for less. Your nursery can even force bulbs for stunning winter and spring centerpieces of your favorite flowers. Plant the bulbs outdoors after the wedding and remember your special day each year when they bloom.

  —Sophie Winston

  Blond, blue-eyed, the bane of women everywhere, there simply was no doubt about it. Hannah’s second husband, Tucker, had rolled into town.

  Tucker Bradford Hensley V, to be very precise. Lady’s man, gambler, sought by mothers on three continents. Money rolled off him like sweat, yet he had no apparent means of support. He broke hearts everywhere he went. He had most certainly broken Hannah’s.

  If I hadn’t been on Duke Street in the middle of congestion, I’d have taken off like a drag racer to escape him. He drove a red convertible, and I could see women in other cars admiring him. I wasn’t an expert on cars, but it looked like a vintage Alfa Romeo, the sexy car Dustin Hoffman drove in The Graduate.

  I gunned my engine and contemplated getting away from him so he couldn’t follow me home. But sanity took over and I realized how futile that would be.

  I squinted at him with suspicion. Tucker wasn’t on the guest list, and I felt certain his sudden appearance in Old Town couldn’t be a coincidence. Surely he hadn’t come to interfere with Hannah’s wedding. Why would he want her back after all these years? Good grief. I wasn’t sure which would be worse, Tucker, who couldn’t keep his trousers zipped, or Craig, the killer. Wait, what was I thinking? Craig made Tucker look like a gem.

  The light changed and so did my mind. I drove steadily but slow enough for Tucker to follow me. Hannah probably wouldn’t fall for him again, but if he could drive a
wedge between her and Craig, that might be a good thing. Despite Tucker’s shallow nature and many shortcomings, he was harmless enough. We’d had some good times when they were married.

  Just to amuse Tucker, I made a few sudden turns and wound through Old Town a bit. If he thought I wanted to lose him, he’d be more likely to follow.

  He bit like a hungry dog offered a sausage.

  Back near my house I had to park on a side street because police cars still crowded my street. I waited for him on the sidewalk and neatly sidestepped the hug and kiss he aimed at me. “I never thought I’d see you again.”