“Your size-six ass never looks big,” Les said. “If you weren’t my friend, I’d hate you.”
Katie swung around. “And I’d trade this freckled package for yours any day of the week. Men love blondes.”
“As long as a sexy redhead isn’t around.” Les eyed Katie’s hair. “Plus, I’ve gained ten pounds. Occupational hazard.”
“And it all went to your boobs.” Katie pointed to the evidence. They both chuckled as Katie glanced at her watch. Obviously, six hours wasn’t enough time to play catch-up with a friend you hadn’t seen in a year. “I have to go or I’ll be late to the cake maker.”
“Go.” Les started to her car. “But bring some chocolate samples.”
Recalling Les’s chocolate-is-the-substitute-for-sex theory, Katie yelled out, “Wait! What happened Thursday night on the date with Mr. Sexy Voice?”
“Oh, gawd, I haven’t told you.” They met halfway and huddled for warmth. “When the waiter brought our check after dinner, Mr. Sexy Voice looked me right in the eyes and said, ‘I hope you’re going to be worth the price of your steak.’”
“Get out of here. No.” Katie giggled.
“Honestly. And when I gave him the evil eye, he had the nerve to ask if I was jealous that he had a penis and I didn’t.”
Katie rubbed her hands together for warmth and anticipation. Les always had great comebacks. “And what did you tell him?”
“That with what I have under my skirt, I can get all the penises I want. Then I paid for my dinner and left. Frankly, those Yankee men just don’t do it for me.”
Katie laughed, but she knew it wasn’t any Yankee persona or penis envy keeping her friend celibate. Les had loved Katie’s brother as much as she had. Katie would bet Les’s engagement ring still hung from its chain and lay hidden under her tan turtleneck. Sometimes life was so unfair. But Katie refused to crater. Cratering just wasn’t in the Ray bloodline. Rays were strong and successful. That was why Katie’s dreams of being an artist had been so un-Ray-like. If a Ray couldn’t do it perfectly, they simply didn’t do it.
Les hugged her again. “I’ll see you to night. After dinner, we’ll paint our toenails. At least I’ll get you painting something.”
As Katie crawled into her Honda, her phone rang again. “Hello?” Another musical snippet of “The Wedding March.”
“Tabitha?” The connection died.
“Strange,” Katie mumbled. “Very strange.”
Chapter Three
Joe Lyon stepped out of the dressing room and onto the platform to let the tailor mark the hem on his tux. And he hoped like hell the man would hurry. The damn thing fit like a life jacket: cumbersome, heavy.
“You look good.” Harry, one of his groomsmen, had followed him to get his tux.
“I look like a hotel doorman.” Joe pulled at the choking collar. Button-downs and Dockers were work attire. He hadn’t worn a suit in ages, and had only donned a tux twice.
“Hey, you want to go out for a beer to night?” Harry asked.
“Can’t. I’m meeting Katie.” Was that at four or five? Oh, hell, he couldn’t remember.
“So, the ball-and-chain dance begins,” Harry said. “How you guys can give up the single life is beyond me. Did you see our waitress at lunch? She was hot and I got her number. Variety. Staying single means you get to sample them all.”
Joe ignored Harry. Truth was, he’d hardly spent any time sampling Katie these last few weeks, which partially explained why he had these antsy feelings. Could distance cause cold feet? But damn, it didn’t make sense. Katie was sexy, smart, funny, and good-hearted. She was everything a man could want. Even his mom agreed. And he and his mom didn’t agree on much. So why had he practically avoided Katie these last two weeks? Why wasn’t he aching to be with her 24-7? What did it mean?
“You done?” he asked the man who had been chalking his pants and now stood on the other side of the room staring at him. Joe glanced around. Harry had disappeared, too.
“Been done.” The man laughed. “Got cold feet, do ya?”
Joe stepped down from the platform and went to get his clothes back on. It will go away, he told himself. The anxiety. The doubt. It would go away. Before the wedding, he hoped.
And if it didn’t? Hell. What would he do?
About four that afternoon, Carl watched a guy pay for a pack of thirty-six lubricated condoms in neon colors and wondered how long it would be before he trusted himself enough to start tapping the well again, trusting himself to separate the physical from the emotional.
He waited until the man left before plunking down the bag of gummy worms on the store counter. The lady there scanned his worms and grinned.
“Looks like he’s going to have a better day than you or I,” she said with a laugh.
Carl didn’t need to be reminded. His cell phone rang, and this time he carefully read the number of the caller. No more daily-constitutional talks with strangers. “Hey, Dad. How’s Austin?”
“Good. I’m thinking of staying for a few more days. It depends if Jessie can get off Monday. We don’t have anything that can’t wait, do we?”
We? Carl frowned. After giving his dad a few jobs, his old man believed they had a regular gig. It wasn’t that Carl thought his dad, two years retired from Houston PD, couldn’t do the job; Carl just didn’t want to spend his every working hour with the old man telling him how to run his business and his life.
He pulled out his wallet. “Stay and have a good time.”
“Did you get the pictures to Mrs. Davis?”
“Yeah.” Carl dropped a few bills beside the worms on the sales counter.
“Did she like the one of her husband dressed in that pink silk gown with the slits cut plum up to his wingwanger?”
Carl could tell his dad’s girlfriend wasn’t around now. Buck Hades had a way with words, like a hung-over sailor on a more colorful day, except in the presence of a lady. “I think she picked that one to show the judge.”
His dad laughed. “Gotta love this job.”
Love it? Photographing cross-dressers and cheating spouses didn’t fit Carl’s idea of love. He longed for a real case.
“Is that all?” the woman behind the counter asked. Carl sent her a nod.
“Where are you?” his dad asked. “Tell me you called that friend of Jessie’s cousin and took her out. She had a nice rack on her.”
Dropping a few bills, Carl frowned. “What part of ‘when you get your ass tattooed with a pink butterfly’ didn’t you understand?” Okay, so he might have inherited his dad’s colorful language problem. But the old man’s interference had gone too far.
“You gotta move on. I know Amy did a number on you, but it’s not healthy for your prostate to go a year without—”
“My prostate is fine.” Carl spotted the cashier’s grin, and his frown deepened.
“Waxing your own candle isn’t the same thing,” his dad said.
Okay, Carl wasn’t going to get into a conversation about waxing his candle or prostate cleansing with his dad. He’d rather talk about his daily constitutional with Tabitha Jones.
“Enjoy Austin,” he said. He grabbed his worms, left his change, and had almost shut his phone when he heard his dad’s voice.
“Are you going to your brother’s to help him finish moving?”
He raised the phone back to his ear. “I helped Friday night, but I may drop by if my meeting doesn’t go too long.” He ducked into the cold and headed for his car. While it rarely happened, the forecast had Houston hitting the single digits tomorrow, and it felt like the front had jumped the gun.
“What meeting?” his dad asked.
Carl crawled into his car. “It’s about a case.”
“What kind of case?”
“Don’t have the details yet. We’ll talk later.”
“Son, about your women issues…”
“I told you, Dad, I don’t have women issues.”
“If it’s about your mom, you need to know—”
“Gotta go.” One button push ended the conversation. Some subjects were delicate, such as candle waxing and his prostate. Others were downright barred. He pocketed his worms, tossed his phone into the passenger seat, and drove off to talk to Ms. Jones about her missing brides.
Katie dropped her keys and checkbook into her bag with the ten Styrofoam boxes of cake, and left her purse behind to lighten her load. Todd Sweet’s assistant had given her extra samples.
As Katie moved up to the porch, she glanced around the wedding planner’s new place. The silver maples fronting the house stood naked and almost ghostlike; their dead brown leaves scuttled across the lawn in the icy wind. A shiver, and not just from the cold, hopscotched up Katie’s spine. The place looked like a fortress—or a prison. She noted the bars on the windows.
Tabitha’s praise of her new home as Katie remembered it stood at odds with its ambience. It’s six times bigger than my old house. And with five acres, I’ll start throwing weddings here next spring. Katie wasn’t so sure she shared Tabitha’s feelings for the property.
Not that Katie’s feelings on the subject mattered much to Tabitha Jones. They weren’t exactly friends. Tabitha was simply a rich patron who frequented the gallery Katie managed. So when Joe had asked her to marry him and wanted it to happen ASAP, before his mother’s illness took a turn for the worse, Katie had gone straight to Tabitha for advice. And because Katie had offered the wedding planner a few discounts on artwork, Tabitha had felt compelled to do the same—even when it was last-minute planning.
No complaints from Katie. It felt nice knowing she had professional help. Her mom, the professional type, would have approved.
As Katie knocked, she looked down at her ringless left hand. She was amazed she didn’t feel naked without it. Probably because she’d only worn the ring for eight weeks.
Already keeping secrets from him, huh? Les’s question tiptoed across Katie’s mind. Happily, she didn’t have time to ponder it because the door swung open.
“Hey,” Tabitha oozed. In her late forties, the woman breathed out words more than she spoke them. “How’s my latest bride?”
“A little nervous,” Katie admitted. “Hey, I brought some extra wedding cake samples in case you wanted to try them.”
“I never sample,” Tabitha snapped. She ran a hand over her white suit as if to emphasize her slim shape. “Plus, you’re not using Todd Sweet for the cake. And I just hired you a different DJ, florist, and photographer.”
“But you…recommended them. And—”
“Trust me.” Worry flashed across Tabitha’s face, but then she smiled. The worried look left so fast that Katie wondered if she’d imagined it.
“Come in!” Tabitha said. “Why don’t we head to my office?” She swept out her arm as if to show off her place.
“It’s really big,” Katie said, not wanting to lie, and still worried about the sudden change in her wedding plans.
“I know,” Tabitha said. “I’m lucky to have gotten this place. I just had the carpet installed. Don’t you love it?”
“Umm,” was all Katie said as she looked. White. Startling white. Hurts-to-look-at-it-too-long white.
They walked down the hall and into an office where, in the blink of an eye, Tabitha, the patron who bought lots of art, morphed into the Nazi wedding planner from hell.
Poised like a matronly high school teacher behind her large mahogany desk, Tabitha commenced to ream Katie out for waiting so long to organize the grand event. Never mind that Tabitha was the one changing things midstream. Then, typing on her keyboard, Tabitha switched from reaming to spouting orders. Katie had to:
Go to the new florist to pick out her flowers. Today.
Get new samples and make an immediate decision on the cakes. Today.
Have the wedding dress fitting by…last week.
And drag her “one” bridesmaid, Les, to be fitted for her dress by…today.
And if it didn’t get done? The big, black, slimy, hideously ugly wedding monster would rise from the earth and gobble Katie’s head off, and the whole wedding would be a big freaking joke. Which wouldn’t, couldn’t, happen because Tabitha Jones didn’t throw bad weddings.
Okay, Tabitha hadn’t said the monster stuff, but it had been implied. When had the wedding become more about the wedding planner than the bride? Since when did a wedding planner have the right to make changes without consulting the bride? Katie started to ask. “I—”
“You got all that?” Tabitha barked.
Truth be told, Katie wasn’t a pushover. She faced disgruntled artists, dissatisfied art dealers, and idiot art critics at her job on a regular basis. She could hold her own pretty darn well. But some people scared her. And right now, Tabitha Jones was one of those people.
“I got it.” Katie tapped her notebook with her pen.
A ringing doorbell interrupted the tense silence and Tabitha’s white-suited body rose from her white leather chair. The woman liked white.
“It’s probably…my next appointment. Give me a sec, sweetie,” Tabitha said.
Sweetie? Had she said “sweetie”? Yup. And now the Nazi wedding planner from hell was patting Katie on the arm.
“Just relax.” Tabitha’s words once again oozed out rather than being barked. “Weddings can be murder, but we have to stay calm.” She started to the door. “I’ll have him wait in my second office.”
Wanting to get out of there ASAP—before Tabitha’s bipolar personality did more morphing—Katie pulled out her checkbook and wrote Tabitha a check for the agreed-upon amount. Which, all of a sudden, seemed to be a lot more than Tabitha was worth. Not that it mattered. Katie had hired her, and paying her now was only fair. Well, maybe not really fair, but it went back to the fear factor, and more importantly to Tabitha being a regular gallery patron. Ticking her off wouldn’t be good for business.
Katie signed her last name on the check and paused when she realized it would probably be one of the last times she wrote Katie Ray, because she’d soon become Katie Lyon.
“Katie Lyon.” She said the name aloud and…bam! Her stomach went from okay to sour in zero flat. Her gaze shot around for a trash can. None.
“Oh, fudge.” Cupping her hand over her mouth, she realized she couldn’t give up her last name any more than she could puke on Tabitha’s new white carpet. The Ray name was one of the last ties she had to her family. Instant tears clouded her vision. Why did her family have to die, leaving her all alone?
She was still fighting the nausea and cloudy vision when she heard a scream. And not just any scream, but an oh-shit-I’m-screwed kind of scream. And not the good kind of screwed, either.
Jumping up, Katie shot to the door and peeped through the open slit. She could see the screaming Tabitha, but not the person being screamed at.
While eavesdropping on private screaming matches wasn’t Katie’s thing, she couldn’t help but try to make sense of the jumble of words.
“You! Brides. Can’t do this. Psycho freak. Murderer!”
All of a sudden, the words weren’t important. Not when the loud pop sounded. And once again, it wasn’t a good kind of pop.
With her nose poked through the small opening of the door, Katie watched Tabitha Jones, bipolar wedding planner extraordinaire, fall to the floor. Something bright red flowed out the front of Tabitha’s white dress and trickled down onto her brand-new, white—startling white, hurts-to-look-at-it-too-long white—carpet.
“Fudge.” Oh, hell. Les was right. This deserved the real word. “Fuck!” Then, unable to help herself, she barfed.
Staring at the mess—which looked like a bad abstract painting in shades of mauve against the white carpet—Katie lost her ability for rational thought. Time seemed to stand still. She vaguely recalled looking for a phone to dial 911 and not finding one. The next thing she knew, she had her bag, which held her cake samples, her keys, and her checkbook, and was hotfooting it down the hall.
Down the hall.
Away from the fro
nt door.
Away from a bleeding Tabitha.
Away from the person who had made Tabitha bleed.
And deeper into the house that looked way too much like a prison.
She’d only made it a couple feet when she heard them: footsteps. She screamed and took off at a dead run.
Chapter Four
Carl parked behind a silver Honda that was parked in front of a white elephant of a house.
He let his motor continue to run while he listened to his CD. From the conversation he’d had with Ms. Jones, he figured he might need a bit of Zeppelin before facing both her and her story of missing brides-to-be. He wasn’t sure if he bought into her concerns, either. From what she’d said, the cops hadn’t given her story any weight. But he’d learned the hard way not to discount anything too quickly. Discounting things had gotten him shot.
When the song finished, he forced himself out of his car and studied the house. Having grown up only a few miles down the road, he’d heard the rumors about this place. Supposedly, the guy who’d had the home built was a rich paranoid schizophrenic who’d believed the government was out to get him. Carl chuckled. A home with so much prison emphasis was going to house a wedding planner? What irony, seeing that marriage was the social equivalent.
To some people. Carl admitted that his older brother seemed happy locked up in his jubilant little life with a doting, pie-baking wife, cute kid, and a fetching manly dog. To each his own.
His humor vanished when he heard a scream. Grabbing his gun, he edged up to the door, which stood ajar. Thrown subconsciously into his police training, he backed up against the wall and became acutely aware of his surroundings. The cold. The wind. The sudden silence.
And the coppery scent.
Counting to three, he shifted to peer inside. His gaze lit on a woman lying faceup on the carpet. Blood. It was everywhere. “Ah, shit.”
Was it Tabitha? Was she the one who’d just screamed?
As if in answer, another scream sounded. And not from the lady in white.
The urgency in the shrill voice echoing from deeper inside the house put Carl on automatic. “Police!” he called out. “Throw down your weapons!”
Weddings Can Be Murder Page 2