Terror in Taffeta

by Marla Cooper

  “Fernando?” I wanted to intercede before he pulverized our entire meal. “Fernando, what do you know?”

  He set down his knife and put both hands on the edge of the counter, blowing out a long breath.

  “That girl—she was no good. La diabla.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “One night after dinner, I came into the kitchen and I found her in here. She said she was still hungry and just wanted to make a snack. I told her guests aren’t allowed in the kitchen, but she did not care. She said she could have me fired like that.” He snapped his fingers to illustrate.

  “Oh, jeez. I’m sorry, Fernando.” I wished I’d been there to tell him not to listen to her. She didn’t have any power over him, but there was no way he could have known that.

  “I told her fine, I would make her some food, but then she decided to help herself to one of the bottles of champagne from the refrigerator. I said, ‘No, no way, you can’t have that. It is for the newlyweds.’”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said they would not miss it. I told her my employers keep a strict inventory, but she did not care. She just kept saying, ‘Charge it to my room!’ I told her it didn’t work that way, that this was not a hotel.” Fernando waved his arms to emphasize his point, knocking the knife to the floor with a clatter. “I begged her. I said, ‘If a bottle goes missing, it will come out of my paycheck.’ She said, ‘Well, I guess that’s your problem, isn’t it?’” He had picked up the knife and was waving it in the air to punctuate his thoughts.

  “That’s super weird, and I really want to hear the rest of the story, but could you possibly put that knife down?”

  “Oh, sorry.” He dropped the knife back onto the cutting board, much to my relief, and wiped his hands on his apron.

  “Thanks. Okay, go on.”

  “Anyway, I grabbed her arm to stop her, but she told me if I did not let go, she would scream. Then she got really angry. She said if I didn’t back off, she really would have me fired. Then she left, and she took the champagne. I didn’t know what to do. It was a very expensive bottle. More than I can afford.” His eyes grew worried. “I cannot afford to lose this job. I have a family to feed.”

  What had Dana been thinking? Surely she must have understood what an awkward position that would put Fernando in, but she obviously hadn’t cared. “So what did you do?” I asked.

  “There was nothing I could do. We have one rule here: Make sure the guests are happy. And she told me if I said one word to anyone, she was going to make my life—what did she call it?—a living hell.” He leaned back against the counter, folding his arms across his chest.

  I could see a trend here. The more I learned about Dana, the more I realized that she’d made a lot of enemies. Including one pissed-off house chef who’d had both motive and opportunity. “Fernando, you have to see how this looks. Dana threatened you, then she turned up dead.”

  The cook’s eyes grew wide. “You have to believe me. I did not hurt that girl. If I had killed her, I would have lost my job anyway, because I would be in jail, verdad?”

  “I guess so…”

  “I hope you believe that I did not do this thing.” His eyes searched mine.

  I nodded, not sure what to say. I didn’t really believe he’d poisoned Dana, but I still didn’t understand why he’d lied. “So why did you tell me you’d never talked to her?”

  “I didn’t want any more trouble.”

  Poor guy. “Well, don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. I’m just trying to find out what happened, because right now Zoe is sitting in jail and apparently I can’t leave the country until she’s free.”

  “You cannot leave? But why not? You are just the wedding planner, not the police.”

  “I’m glad someone sees that.” I picked up my abandoned tamale and finished it off.

  “These people you work for, they are very strange.”

  “You’ve got that right,” I sighed. “I don’t know how I got myself into this mess. Except that I feel really bad for Zoe. I visited her at the jail today, and she looked awful. I promised I’d help figure out who did this and get her out of there.”

  He gave me a sympathetic nod, then furrowed his brows as if working out a complex math problem. After a moment of silence, he spoke: “There is one thing you should know.”

  I put my fork down again. He had my attention. “Yes?”

  “If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell anyone who told you?”

  “Of course, Fernando.”

  “It is not my place. What my guests do, it is not my business. I am paid only to cook. Promise me, you don’t tell anyone.”

  “I promise. What is it?”

  “The night she came to me, I did try to go to her room. I wanted to talk to her, beg her not to get me fired.”

  “You what? Fernando, this is terrible! Why didn’t you tell me before?” Either he was about to confess, or he was about to make it a whole lot harder for anyone to believe his version of the story.

  “Wait!” he cried, holding up his hands. “I never made it to her room. As I was walking down the hall, I saw someone else by her door. He knocked, and she let him in.”

  “He? He who?”

  “It is hard to be certain. But I think it was the—what is the word? El novio.”

  “Boyfriend? I don’t think Dana had a boyfriend.” Of course, it could have been someone she met in town, although jeez, even Dana didn’t seem that easy. Maybe she had hooked up with someone from the wedding. It happened all the time. Whoever it was, I had to find him, because he would have had the opportunity to poison Dana.

  He looked around to make sure we were still alone, then lowered his voice to a whisper. “No, not her boyfriend. The one who was getting married. Señor Moreno. Vince. He’s the one who was in her room that night.”

  CHAPTER 13

  You could have knocked me over with a churro. Vince? In Dana’s room? I’ve heard of grooms getting cold feet, drunk-dialing their exes, and engaging in all sorts of questionable behavior the night before the wedding, but Vince didn’t seem like the type for such last-minute shenanigans. Besides, he knew Dana well enough to stay far away from her. Didn’t he?

  “Fernando, are you sure?”

  “It was dark, so I cannot be positive, but it looked like him. Whoever it was, he was wearing an orange guayabera shirt.”

  I couldn’t remember what Vince had been wearing that night, but I couldn’t rule out orange. It was a good color on him.

  “And what time was it?”

  “I got finished cleaning up around eleven, but I was too upset to go to bed, so I opened a beer. Around eleven-thirty, I decided to go see if she was awake. That’s when I spotted him in the corridor.”

  My head was swimming with this new information. What reason could Vince have possibly had for a late-night liaison? “And she let him in?”

  “Sí.”

  “You’re sure of it?”

  “Yes, he went in, and she closed the door behind him.”

  This was so not good. Even if Vince hadn’t killed Dana, there couldn’t have been any good reason for him going into her room in the middle of the night. Nicole would be devastated either way. I would have to handle this with extreme caution.

  With promises not to divulge my source, I excused myself and headed straight for Brody’s room. I found him right where I’d left him, working on his computer.

  I flopped onto the bed and watched him peck away at the keyboard. “Any luck?”

  “Hold on, I’m in the middle of…” He trailed off, engrossed in his task.

  “You’re never going to believe what I found out.”

  “Just … hold on. I’m trying to…” More keystrokes and a few murmured curse words.

  “But, Brody—”

  He shot me a look. “What part of ‘hold on’ don’t you understand? You asked me to do this, now hold your horses.”

  I waited patiently for at least twenty second
s before interrupting again. “But this is important!”

  “Seriously? You are such a toddler. Okay, fine. What is it that can’t wait, other than you?”

  I squirmed up into a sitting position. “Guess who Fernando saw going into Dana’s room the night before she died.”

  “Oh, let me think. Benito Juárez.”

  Was I detecting a note of sarcasm?

  “The former president of Mexico? No, he’s dead, Brody.”

  “Ah, that’s too bad. Then I give up. Who?”

  I looked at him expectantly, eyebrows raised. “Who would be the last person you’d ever guess?”

  “I already told you: Benito Juárez.”

  This would have been a lot more fun with a willing participant. “I’ll give you a clue: What if Benito Juárez had been getting married the next day?”

  “Then that would have been very, very bad of Benito and very unfair to Mrs. Benito.”

  I nodded encouragingly. “You’re getting warmer.”

  “Wait. You’re not telling me…?”

  I nodded again, watching the expression on Brody’s face change as the news sank in.

  His eyes opened wide. “Get out! Vince was in Dana’s room?”

  “Yes! Or at least we think so. Fernando saw someone going into her room and he was pretty sure it was Vince.”

  He let out a long, slow whistle. “Wow. What are you going to do with that?”

  “No idea. That’s a pretty big accusation, and breaking up a new marriage is a major wedding-planner faux pas. But if it was him—”

  “Then he’d have some pretty major explaining to do,” Brody finished.

  “It still doesn’t mean he killed her,” I said. “But if Vince spent the night before the wedding in Dana’s room, Nicole might just kill him.”

  “So where does that leave us?” Brody asked.

  I sighed and flopped back onto the bed. “Heck if I know. When I started this little extracurricular project, I didn’t think I’d find anything. But the more I learn about Dana, the more the list of suspects grows. Oh, yeah, I guess technically I should include Fernando on that list,” I said, before filling him in on the chef’s story.

  “Wow,” Brody said. “So how many suspects do you have so far?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s make a list.” I grabbed a notebook and a pen off Brody’s bedside table and started drawing a grid.

  “There’s Zoe,” I said, scribbling her name in the left-hand column. “She disliked Dana, but just in a regular way, nothing special. Plus she says she didn’t do it, and I believe her.”

  “Okay, next?”

  “Next was Trevor. He definitely had the motive with the mental anguish Dana put him through, pretending to be pregnant and all. But he wouldn’t have had much opportunity because he was here with a date.”

  “A date we haven’t heard from since,” Brody reminded me.

  “Right! I’ve left her several messages, and she hasn’t called back. I’m getting worried about her.”

  “Should we tell the police?” Brody asked.

  “I don’t really know what we’d tell them: Some girl was here but then she went home?”

  “Yeah, that wouldn’t work.”

  “All right, so Trevor is a maybe,” I said. “Don’t you have any highlighters I can use to color-code this?”

  “Oh, let me check,” Brody said, patting his pockets in an exaggerated way. “Sorry, I seem to be out.”

  “No worries,” I said, ignoring him. “I’ll fill it in later. Okay, so that brings us to Fernando. Dana snatched the champagne from his kitchen, threatened his job, and was constantly sending back her food, which might not be a motive, but it’s super annoying.”

  Brody waited for me to finish jotting notes, then asked, “So what about Vince?”

  I tapped my pen against the notepad in contemplation. “If what Fernando said is true, Vince would make the list, at least as a possibility. But I’d better not write it down for now. He can’t know that we know—especially since we don’t really know.”

  “Oooh, what about Mrs. Abernathy?” Brody asked, a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

  “As a suspect? Okay, I’ll bite. Motive?”

  “Being an evil cow!” He cackled gleefully.

  “C’mon, Brody, you’re going to need more than that.”

  “Okay, the vic failed to RSVP in a timely fashion.”

  “Better. Murder weapon?”

  “A million cc’s of Botox, administered straight into the right ventricle of her heart.”

  I laughed as I tore my burgeoning list of suspects out of his notebook. “You’re a natural at this. I’ll be sure and share your findings with the police next time I talk to them.”

  “All right,” Brody said. “Off you go now. I’ve got some files to hack—just in case my ‘murderous-mother-of-the-bride’ theory doesn’t pan out.”

  * * *

  I stopped by my room long enough to ponder my next move. Napping sounded like a particularly attractive option, but first I needed to check my e-mail. Yikes. I had fourteen new messages to deal with—seven from my assistant, Laurel, with accompanying text messages on my phone:

  Need to talk about Richardson wedding. Call when you can.

  Hey, Kelsey, call me ASAP.

  WTF? Where R U???

  As the urgency increased, so did her use of abbreviations.

  Sigh. Time to pull it together.

  I dialed Laurel, who picked up on the second ring.

  “There you are!” she said, with a mix of exasperation and relief.

  “Why, hello to you, too!” I had a split second of panic that I was in trouble before remembering that I was the boss.

  “Guess who wants to make her grand entrance in a hot air balloon?”

  “Oh, no. Tamara?”

  Hot air balloon rides over the vineyards were a popular wine country attraction, so I didn’t have to rack my brain to figure that one out.

  “Of course it’s Tamara. She saw it on some stupid Travel Channel show and now she has to have it for her wedding.”

  In deference to Laurel’s foul mood, I resisted making a joke about the sky being the limit. “Well, that’s not going to work. You can only do hot air balloon rides really early in the morning because it gets too hot.”

  “Yeah, you try telling her that. She didn’t believe me, but maybe if you were here, you could talk some sense into her.”

  “Sounds like she’s turning into a total Veruca.” Veruca was the code word we’d come up with for demanding brides one night after watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

  “She is! Total Veruca. When I tried to tell her it wouldn’t work, her response was, basically, ‘But I want it.’”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll talk to her.”

  “Well, better make it quick, because we have our final menu tasting tomorrow. I’m about ready to strangle her with her stupid twinkle lights, which, by the way, she thinks aren’t quite the right color so I’m having to reorder.”

  “Please fight the urge to kill her,” I said, rubbing my temples. “I’ve already got one murder on my hands.”

  “Well, you’d better get back here if you want to keep that number at one, because I’m ready to snap!” She really did sound even more stressed than me, if that was possible.

  “Believe me,” I said, “I would much rather be there with you than here dealing with all of this.”

  She paused for a second and blew out a breath. “I know. I’m sorry, I’m just venting. You’re dealing with much worse things than I am.”

  “Don’t worry. I totally get it. It’s frustrating. But you’ll get used to it after a while, and you’ll learn to smile and nod and say, ‘Let me look into that.’ Even if they say they want a kangaroo for a ring bearer.”

  “Unless the wedding’s in Australia. Then that makes perfect sense,” she deadpanned.

  “Of course,” I said, laughing.

  “Oh!” Laurel’s voice brightened. “On a slightly more
positive note, I’ve got something for you. It’s actually kind of interesting. We got an inquiry through our website from a woman who lives there in San Miguel. She got your name from someone who was at the Abernathy wedding, and she was wondering if you’re available.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Does she know about the … you know?”

  “She didn’t say, but maybe you could go meet with her, as long as you’re there. Even if you don’t end up taking the job, it might be nice to go play wedding planner for a few hours. You know, take a break from crime fighting.”

  “Good point. What’s her name?”

  “Jacinda Rivera. She’s actually from Texas—an artist, I think she said. But her family has a home in San Miguel, and she’s thinking of having her wedding there.”

  “All right. Couldn’t hurt. Send me her contact info, and I’ll give her a call.”

  “Okay, sending now.” I could hear her typing the e-mail over the line.

  “Thanks for everything, Laurel. I couldn’t do this without you.”

  “You’re welcome. And you’re right: I am pretty awesome.”

  “Believe me, I know.” And I did. A million people wanted Laurel’s job, but I couldn’t imagine having someone better than her around. She was organized, easygoing, and creative. And basically running my business for me while freaking out only a little. “Don’t worry, Laurel, this will all be over soon. I’ll figure this out, and I’ll be back home before you know it.”

  I sure hoped I wasn’t lying.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Thanks for coming over on such short notice,” said Jacinda Rivera, leading me into her living room. When I’d called to set up a meeting with the bride-to-be, she’d been thrilled that I was available to meet in person and eager to get started right away. “Would you like some refreshments?” she asked, gesturing to a tea tray and plate of cookies she’d set out on the coffee table.

  “What I’d like is to move in,” I exclaimed, taking in the large, dramatic space stuffed with Mexican folk art, quirky antiques, and enough paintings on the walls to warrant their own museum exhibit. “This place is amazing.”

  “Thanks,” she said, beaming. “It belongs to my parents, but they let me hang out here.”