by Laura Durham
“No, thanks,” I called out, sticking my head into the hall. “You two have fun without us.”
“Suit yourself, dear.” Leatrice had Ian by the hand as she pulled him out the door.
Ian gave me a wink and a helpless shrug as he disappeared from view. I almost felt sorry for him, but better him getting the scanner tutorial than me. Once the door closed, I led Kate and Richard to the living room.
Richard gave my dining room table a cursory glance. “Have you ever actually used this?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I have.”
“For dining?” Richard asked.
I stuck my tongue out at him and began clearing the papers off the table. “We can use it now.”
Richard dropped the paper bag on the table and disappeared into the kitchen. Once he was out of sight, Kate delved into the bag, pulling out empanadas wrapped in translucent sheets of white paper.
“They’re still warm,” she moaned.
Richard emerged with a stack of plates, silverware, and paper napkins and began setting the table as I cleaned it off. He pushed Kate out of the way and arranged all the empanadas on a dinner plate in the center of the table, then took a seat at the head.
“Now before anyone takes a bite, I want some explanations,” he announced as Kate and I took chairs opposite each other. “Don’t think I don’t know what’s been going on, Annabelle.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Nothing has happened with Ian, I swear. Nothing yet, at least. Yes, I agreed to go out with him, but I’m not even sure if we’re still on.”
“What?” Richard’s mouth fell open. “You’re seriously considering dating a straight man who owns leather pants? Have I taught you nothing?”
“I can’t believe you told Richard,” Kate muttered, taking a golden brown empanada from the plate and shaking her head.
“I thought that’s what we were talking about.” I gulped.
“Well, it is now.” Richard shook a finger at me. “I’ve seen you make some dating blunders, Annabelle, but nothing on this scale before.”
“Talk about the pot calling the kettle back,” Kate said under her breath.
Richard faced Kate. “Don’t even get me started on your dating life. We don’t have the time.”
“Hey, I’m on your side,” Kate said. “I think Ian is all wrong for her.”
I picked out a spinach empanada and cut into it, letting the steam escape. “You also think he should be one of our suspects.”
“Which is one of the main reasons I think he’s all wrong for you,” Kate mumbled through a mouthful of food.
Richard stared at Kate. “Why would he want to kill Henri?”
Kate shrugged. “I haven’t worked that part out. It just seems like he happens to turn up whenever Annabelle is at the hotel. Including today when Leatrice coincidentally got locked in a freezer.”
“I heard you were at the Fairmont today.” Richard shook a finger at me. “I thought you were letting Kate do the snooping from now on.”
I didn’t bother to ask Richard how he knew. He always had his sources.
“I was,” I explained. “But they found my car, and Leatrice was the only person around to give me a ride to the hotel.”
“She drives?” Richard gasped.
“Sort of,” I said. “Anyway, she ended up getting pushed into a walk-in freezer and Ian helped me find her.”
“This is exactly why I said you shouldn’t meddle in this murder business anymore.” Richard rapped his hand on the table. “I hate being right all the time.”
“Don’t get all worked up,” I said. “Ian found Leatrice before it was too late.”
“A knight in shining armor,” Richard mused, then looked at Kate. “Convenient.”
“You two are impossible. Can’t someone be nice?”
“Take it from me, darling.” Richard took my hand. “If a man seems too good to be true, it’s because he probably is. Remember when I thought I’d found Mr. Right and it turned out he liked to sleep naked holding a ceremonial dagger across his chest?”
Kate nearly choked on her empanada. “I thought I’d had some rough dates.”
“If that wasn’t bad enough, he kept me up all night playing the lyre. And he was an English professor.” Richard shuddered. “Imagine what fetishes a rock singer would have.”
“If you know anything about Ian, I’m all ears.” I tapped my fingers impatiently on the table. “But I say we should be focusing on the most likely suspects, like the remaining chefs and Mr. Elliott.”
Kate snapped her fingers. “The chefs. That’s what I wanted to tell you before I got distracted by the empanadas.”
“What?” I stopped my fork in midair. “Did you find out something today?”
“You know I had to run by the Willard Hotel to pick up some new catering packets. While I was there, I thought I’d chat with some of the waiters as they set up the ballroom.”
“Good thinking, Kate,” I said. “Some of those guys have worked there for over twenty years. They probably know a ton about the different chefs who’ve come and gone.”
“And guess who came and went from the Willard?” Kate grinned.
“We already know that Marcello and Henri were sous chefs together there. That’s not new.”
“But we didn’t know that Emilio and Jean were prep cooks at the Willard at the same time.”
“You’re kidding.” I sucked in my breath. “So Marcello knows Emilio and Jean?”
“It would seem so,” Kate said. “Talk about a coincidence, huh?”
“Don’t tell me you’re back on this again,” Richard groaned. “How many times do I have to explain to you that my chef was working at the time of the murder? He couldn’t possibly have killed Henri.”
“Maybe he didn’t have to,” I said. “Maybe he had an accomplice do the dirty work for him.”
“I wonder which one did it.” Kate wiped her mouth with a napkin. “We should find out how well Marcello knew each of them.”
“Stay away from my chef.” Richard stood up and threw his napkin down. “We have a huge party at Evermay tomorrow night, and if you upset him, heads will roll. And when I say heads, I mean yours.” He picked up his half-eaten empanada and stormed out the door.
Kate sighed. “By the look on your face, I can tell where we’re going after our wedding rehearsal tomorrow night.”
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “Richard will never know we’re there.”
“We’re going to sneak into a private party, question his chef about his connections to a murder, and then leave without Richard finding out?”
“Exactly,” I said, with more confidence than I felt.
Kate put her head in her hands. “One good thing about this plan is that we don’t have to worry about the murderer threatening us anymore. Richard is going to kill us first.”
Chapter 28
“This is my least favorite part of the job,” I complained the next evening as Kate and I waited in the Park Hyatt ballroom for the wedding party to arrive for the rehearsal. After spending the day confirming Nadine’s last minute changes with everyone from the cake baker to the string quartet, we’d gotten there early to make sure that the riser and chairs were set up for our mock ceremony. Now I sat in the front row of chairs with a stack of wedding timelines next to me.
The modern ballroom was a long rectangular room in the basement of the hotel decorated in shades of tan and gold. Modern dome-shaped chandeliers dominated the ceiling and provided the only decor. It was a room that adapted nicely to any type of decorations because it was such a neutral palette, but at the moment it looked naked.
“Why is it that everyone is always late for the rehearsal?” Kate sat on the edge of the riser with her legs sprawled in front of her. I said a silent prayer of thanks that she’d chosen a beige pantsuit and not a skirt.
I looked at my watch. The bride had assured me that everyone would be there at five o’clock, but it was already ten after five and there
was no sign of the bride, groom, or anyone remotely resembling a bridesmaid. “They’d better hurry up. We still need to get to Evermay after this.”
“I’d hoped you’d forgotten about that.” Kate groaned. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea to provoke Richard when he has a big event. You know how moody he gets.”
“I’m telling you, we won’t even see Richard. We’ll be in and out before he notices us.”
“How about I wait in the car? You need a good getaway driver. I can wait on the street with the engine running.”
I shook my head. “Nice try.”
A woman with fiery orange hair stuck her head in the door. “Is this the Goldman-McIntyre wedding?”
I jumped up. “Yes, you’re in the right place.”
She opened the door wide and bellowed into the hall, “Harold! I found it.”
I motioned for Kate to follow me as I walked to the back of the room. “Are you with the bride’s side or the groom’s?”
“I’m Doris Goldman, the mother of the groom.” The woman with orange hair and equally orange-brown skin held out her hand. Her long fingernails had been painted a metallic copper that miraculously matched her unnatural skin tone exactly, and when she smiled, her teeth almost blinded me. I’d forgotten that the groom was from South Florida until that very moment.
“I’m Annabelle, and this is Kate. We’re the wedding planners.”
The mother of the groom gave us another brilliant smile. “My husband was right behind me. I’m always losing him.” She stuck her head back into the hall and screamed his name again.
“Wonder why?” Kate whispered to me.
A pair of short men, both with thinning hair, came through the door. One leaned on a cane and had less hair than the other.
“We’re right here, Doris,” the slightly younger man said. “Your father stopped at the water fountain.”
“How’re ya doing, Dad?” Doris leaned close to her father and shouted into his ear. She turned back to us. “He’s legally blind but still gets around like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Don’t fuss over me.” He swiped at his daughter with his cane, and then squinted in our direction. “Who are these pretty young fillies?”
Kate gave me a look that said she wasn’t fond of being referred to as a filly.
“They’re the wedding planners,” Doris shouted at a safe distance from the cane.
The grandfather hiked his brown polyester pants even higher around his chest and shuffled over to Kate. He moved pretty fast for a blind guy. “You’ll tell me what I need to do, then?”
“Sure.” Kate smiled and took a baby step away from him as he slipped a hand around her waist. As his hand drifted south, Kate’s eyes widened and she looked to me for help. I bit my lip to keep from laughing.
Doris beamed. “He’s quite the ladies’ man at his retirement community.”
“I can see that,” I said.
“Now what’s the protocol of escorting single blind grandfathers down the aisle?” Doris rested a hand on my arm.
Did she really think a rule existed for precisely this situation? I imagined flipping through the index of an imaginary wedding protocol book. Grandfathers, blind grandfathers, single blind grandfathers, single blind grandfathers without dates…
“There isn’t a rule for this, per se—” I began.
“Sorry we’re late.” Nadine burst through the door with an entourage of bridesmaids scuttling behind her. “We just got out of the salon.”
I wondered if the salon had been in Texas, because every girl’s hair was teased a mile high. They all wore brightly colored cocktail-length dresses and matching high-heeled sandals, and they were all accessorized out the wazoo. I’d bet money that not a single one of the bridesmaids was from D.C.
Nadine’s brown hair had been highlighted with blond streaks and she looked especially tiny in her strapless pink dress with a chocolate brown ribbon belt. I caught the distinctive scent of cigarettes as she approached me, and was surprised not to see one dangling from her fingers.
“Nadine, honey.” The mother of the bride followed close on her heels, clutching a huge bouquet of bows and ribbons that were tied onto a paper plate. She wore a pastel blue cocktail suit, a single strand of pearls, and a tortured expression. “Don’t forget your stand-in bouquet.”
“Let’s get this over with.” Nadine took the ribbon bouquet from her mother and tossed her pink clutch purse on a nearby chair. “I’m dying for a drink.”
Her mother gasped, but the groom’s mother tossed her head back and laughed, then walked over and flung an arm around the mother of the bride. “Come on, Audrey. I think we could all use a drink.”
The mother of the bride pressed her lips together until they vanished from sight. South Florida meets the Deep South wasn’t going too well.
“We probably should wait until David arrives,” I said to Nadine, who gave me a blank look. “You know, your fiancé.”
She looked around the room and her expression darkened. “Where is he?” She tapped the toe of her pink and brown sandal on the carpet. “He’d better not ruin my wedding.”
“We can go ahead and put your bridesmaids in order on the stage,” I said to pacify her. “That way when the guys arrive, we’ll be ready to do the run-through.”
Kate extricated herself from the grandfather’s grip and rushed forward. “Let me do it.” I’d never seen her so eager to arrange bridesmaids. Usually it was the worst task. Either the girls were too busy gossiping and giggling to listen to our instructions or they thought they knew it all and couldn’t be bothered to pay attention. Worse yet were the ones who secretly wanted to be wedding planners and tried to take over. Give me a bunch of clueless guys any day.
“Bridesmaids, follow me,” Kate called out as she marched down the aisle toward the stage. The grandfather hobbled forward after Kate, and the girls straggled behind in clusters of twos and threes.
“I hope this doesn’t take too long.” Nadine sighed, following her bridesmaids. “We need to be at the Occidental Grill by six.”
Bold words from a girl who’d breezed in twenty minutes late from the hair salon. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I hadn’t gotten my final payment yet. Be nice, Annabelle.
“I’m worried about her.” The mother of the bride came up next to me, her Southern drawl dripping like molasses off every word. “Nadine has always been such a sensitive girl. I think this wedding stress is taking a toll on her nerves.”
I looked up at the stage where Nadine stood with one hip jutted out and her hands planted firmly on her hips. Her mother clearly lived in a fantasy world.
“The hard part is almost over,” I assured her with one of my meaningless platitudes saved exactly for such an occasion.
“Not that his family has helped matters.” She cut her eyes to the groom’s family. “They don’t care at all about the proper way to do things. It’s been most upsetting for poor Nadine.”
Poor Nadine chose that moment to bellow across the room. “Mother, do you have the programs that I asked you to bring?”
“Of course, honey.” Her mother hurried forward, taking tiny steps and holding out a Crane’s shopping bag. “They’re right here.”
The mother of the groom sidled up next to me and said in a stage whisper, “That woman needs a laxative worse than anyone I’ve ever seen.”
The mother of the bride twitched in mid-walk, but didn’t break her stride or her smile. Despite the fact that the groom’s mother was brazen, not to mention completely orange, she was starting to grow on me.
I looked up at the stage where Kate had the bridesmaids arranged in an angled line. Nadine stood glaring at her watch, while her mother began handing out programs. I looked at the ballroom doors and tried to will the groom to appear.
My attempt at mental telepathy was interrupted when the mother of the bride shrieked from the front of the room. I spun around and was thankful to see that she appeared to be fine, although her face was
flushed red and her lips were set in a white line. The groom’s grandfather stood next to her grinning from ear to ear. For a blind guy with a cane, he sure got around.
“That means he likes you, Audrey,” the mother of the groom called out, then threw her head back and laughed.
The bride’s mother turned an unpleasant shade of purple and stalked out of the room with the groom’s grandfather shuffling after her. At this rate we’d all be lucky to make it to the wedding day.
The groom rushed in the door past his future mother-in-law, followed by a group of large groomsmen.
“Where have you been?” screamed the bride.
The groom looked flushed under his tan, and I could see beads of sweat on his brow as he passed me. “The streets are blocked. There are police cars and ambulances everywhere. We had to park six blocks away and walk.”
“What are you talking about?” Nadine’s eyes flashed with impatience.
“It’s true, Nadine.” A groomsman with no neck spoke up in defense of the groom. “Something happened at the hotel across the street. It’s nuts out there.”
Kate and I looked at each other. There were two hotels that could be considered to be across the street from the Park Hyatt. The Fairmont and the Westin Grand.
“Which hotel?” I asked, my voice barely above a squeak.
“The big one,” Neckless said. “I think it starts with an F.”
That’s what I was afraid of.
Chapter 29
“This is a nightmare.” Mack lurched toward me on the sidewalk in front of the Park Hyatt dragging a large wrought-iron flower stand behind him.
I tore my attention away from the swarm of police and emergency vehicles across the street at the Fairmont. I hadn’t expected to see the Mighty Morphin Flower Arrangers until the wedding day. “What are you doing here?”
“The hotel said we could load in the heavy things tonight to save us some setup time tomorrow.” Mack wiped his forehead with a Bikers for Jesus bandana, and then jammed it back in the pocket of his black leather pants. “But if we’d known the streets were going to be closed we never would’ve bothered.”