“About us,” said Kevin, neatly puncturing my melodramatic balloon. “I just don't think we're really compatible, do you?”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I ALMOST LAUGHED IN RELIEF, BUT THEN I DIDN'T. GETTING dumped isn't really funny.
“Not compatible? Um, I guess we're not. Obviously we're not, if you don't think we are. I mean, it doesn't have to be unanimous, does it? It's not a vote or anything.”
I was talking nonsense, but Kevin nodded eagerly. “I knew you'd understand. I was going to tell you the night of the concert at Mary Ellen's house, but then Charles fell . . .”
He continued to speak, but I just nodded mechanically, hardly listening, as another piece of the puzzle slotted home. I hadn't thought to wonder how Charles knew what to say in his phony message, but now I thought I knew.
Charles could easily have been eavesdropping on our conversation in the cloakroom, when I asked Kevin to search for the murder weapon. Then he either faked a seizure, or had a real one. We'd never know for sure, but it seemed to fit.
“. . . so I promised Fiona I'd talk to you today.”
“Fiona?”
Being a redhead, Kevin had a blush even redder than Eddie's. “Yes. We've been . . . She told me she's always felt . . .”
“Of course,” I said hurriedly. “I'm sure you're compatible. Very compatible.”
Poor Rudy, I was thinking. Though come to think of it, maybe I was way off base about Fiona and the panini chef, too. You'd think a wedding planner would be better at recognizing romance.
I saw Kevin out, both of us mumbling platitudes, and went back to work. Or at least tried to. I was so preoccupied that it barely registered when Eddie knocked off for the afternoon and left. I was alone, then, when the call came from Simon Weeks.
“Can I stop in at your office?” asked the harsh-toned voice. “Ivy asked me to discuss something with you.”
He arrived soon after, and informed me that the “something” was Sally Tyler's wedding. It wasn't postponed. It was canceled.
“You understand why Ivy didn't come in person,” said Simon. “She's devastated about Charles. And the girl's not talking to anyone. But Ivy didn't want to keep you hanging.”
“I appreciate that.”
Simon was standing by the office window, frowning out at the rain. Unlike Kevin's sweater and jacket, Simon wore a charcoal suit and a burgundy tie, but I wondered if they'd been at the same meeting. No doubt he'd be sitting in for Ivy at a lot of meetings now, and doing an excellent job of it.
How could I have imagined that Ivy would favor Kevin Bauer over a fellow executive like Simon Weeks? They were birds of a feather, energetic and ambitious. That would matter a lot to Ivy.
“Can you tell me what happened?” I asked it carefully, wondering how much Ivy's lover would know about Ivy's daughter. “Is Sally all right?”
Simon surprised me then, by breaking into a broad grin. “Nothing wrong with Sally Tyler that a good spanking wouldn't cure. You've worked with her all this time, you must know she's a spoiled brat.”
I grinned just a little myself. “No comment. I am curious, though. Who called it off?”
“Frank did.” Simon shook his handsome gray head, surprised but not at all disapproving. “She threw one last little hissy fit about her precious New Year's Eve party, and Frank just told her off and walked away. It was a sight to see.”
“You were there?”
He nodded casually. “I'm helping Ivy with the press, and the funeral arrangements. We're very close, you know.”
Not a word, not a look, revealed any sense of self-consciousness. Either Simon Weeks was unaware that I knew about him and Ivy, or he didn't care anymore. A decent mourning period, and then they could be together in public.
“Speaking of arrangements,” he said, returning to the chair by my desk, “what does Ivy owe everybody, and what else needs to be done? She said you have all the contracts.”
We went through the paperwork—Simon was quite efficient—and he wrote a number of checks on an MFC account. Including one to me personally, for quite a liberal amount.
“This isn't necessary,” I protested. “We charge a commission—”
“I know. But Ivy thought you might have medical expenses, or . . . Well, she wanted to acknowledge what you went through.”
“That's very generous of her.”
I waited for a cryptic remark, a hint, an obliquely worded suggestion that the check was meant to buy my discretion. But it never came. So I folded the check and tucked it into a pocket, with some interesting thoughts about how to spend it.
“Well,” I said, “I think that's everything. Except I still have a box of gifts from the bachelor party. It's been in my van all this time. But I'll call Frank directly about that.”
“You might want to wait a while,” said Simon. “Let him cool down. I think he went off on a ski trip, anyway. Maybe he'll meet a nice girl.”
Once Simon left, I made a series of apologetic phone calls to Joe, Boris, and the other vendors for Tyler/Sanjek. Naturally, everyone assumed the cancellation was just a postponement, due to the death of the bride's stepfather. So I had to be the bearer of bad news, and tell them that a rescheduled date was not on the horizon.
With that unpleasant task out of the way, I went out to Vanna, to bring in Frank's box. I'd decided to throw out the gag stuff, figuring the ex-bridegroom wouldn't find them funny anymore, and just keep the valuables to give him later. I set the box on my kitchen table and opened up a black plastic garbage bag. No way was I going to let these particular items drift around loose in the Dumpster for the neighbors to see.
One by one, each tasteless item went into the bag, leaving only a bottle of Scotch, Aaron's box of mini-cigars, and a digital camera with a zoom lens. I'd noticed the camera before, without giving it a thought. But now, as it rested in my hand, something about it struck me as odd. The camera wasn't boxed, but even if Frank had unwrapped it, why would a gift item looked scuffed-up like this? No one from the party had spoken up about a lost camera . . .
But one person didn't have the chance to speak up: Jason Kraye. And if the camera was Jason's, then Lou Schulman would have been desperate to get his hands on it. He could have figured out that the camera was in with the gifts, and then tried to break into Ivy's apartment, where he knew I was staying, to steal it.
The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was. The burglary had failed, so Lou tried to get the box out of my van on the night of the sushi dinner at Ivy's house.
Secret pictures, Charles said. Maybe he meant the videotapes, but maybe not . . .
I switched the camera on and turned it over, to where the screen on the back showed a menu of commands. I tapped my way through the menu to DISPLAY, and looked at the first photograph.
I never looked at the second.
Captured there on the tiny screen, crisp and bright, was the image of a pair of lovers standing just inside a window in a brick wall. The photograph must have been taken from hiding, from across the alley, because the lovers clearly believed themselves unobserved.
They were half-dressed, and twined in a passionate embrace. I recognized Ivy Tyler from the back, by her silver-blonde hair. And I recognized her lover's face, the jet-black hair tousled, the striking eyes closed in abandon. A partner for life, Charles had said. Madison Jaffee was very beautiful.
It took me a moment to find ERASE. When I'd deleted every image, I pulled out the memory card from inside the camera, and pulverized it on a cutting board with the back of a skillet. Then I took the fragments, and the camera, too, out to my front deck and threw them all into Elliott Bay.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
MIAMI BEACH WASN'T AT ALL WHAT I EXPECTED.
Sure I'd seen the pictures of high-piled hotels marching to the water's edge, and hundreds of tourists spread out on their towels like long pale fish being cured in the sun.
What I didn't realize was that if you stand knee-deep in the water, with your back to
the hotels and the towels, all you see before you is the glittering turquoise Atlantic stretching eastward forever and ever under the cobalt sky.
That's a lot of ocean for a girl from Idaho, even if she did move to the edge of Puget Sound. The Sound is clouded gray half the time anyway, without a palm tree in sight, and even the Oregon coast is mostly rocks and cold water. Miami Beach has sand the color of sugar, and warm water so clear that it looks like blue Jell-O.
“Wow,” I said to Aaron, who was standing at my side in shorts and a tropical shirt. “Wow, wow, wow.”
“Nice, huh? Well, now you've seen it. Let's go back to the room.”
“No way! I want a long walk with my feet in the water, and a seafood lunch, and some of that Cuban coffee you told me about. I want to visit the Art Deco district in South Beach, that I read about on the plane. I want to go dancing. I want to go shopping.”
“Shopping!” Aaron's grin shone white as the sand. The man tanned in less than a week. Amazing. “Stretch, you disappoint me.”
“Get used to it.”
He tried to shove me in the water then, but I shoved back, and we ended in a happy tangle, sitting waist-deep in the blue Jell-O and laughing hilariously, just for the pleasure of laughing.
Ivy Tyler's check had nicely covered a last-minute flight to Miami, and I'd arrived late Thursday night, after wrapping up Buckmeister/Frost and turning my brain inside out for Detective Bates. He said I was free to go and I went, straight to the airport, and nine hours later Aaron and I had gone straight to bed.
Eventually, we even slept.
Once it was Friday morning though, the morning of New Year's Eve, I was ready to rock and roll. And even Aaron couldn't make love all day, much as he professed his willingness to try. So we walked the beach and had a fabulous fishy lunch and went sightseeing to my heart's content.
But by mid-afternoon, when my heart wanted to blow the last of Ivy's money on a really great dress, Aaron drew the line on keeping me company. He arranged to pay his grandfather yet another visit, and dropped me off on Lincoln Road, the shopping nirvana of South Beach. As I got out of the car, he handed me a business card for a restaurant named Spiga.
“Six o'clock sharp, Stretch. I had to call about twenty places to get reservations.”
Well, sort of sharp. At six-twenty I was still hurrying down Collins Avenue, wearing the really great dress, and marveling at the change that came over the Art Deco hotels when the sun went down.
They were fabulous enough in the sunshine, sleek geometric blocks and curves and swoops of beautifully restored pastel-painted stucco from the 1920's, like big wonderful wedding cakes against the luminous blue sky.
But at night the neon came on, in electric pinks and greens and purples, and the music spilled out from the bistros across the crowded sidewalk tables and into the narrow street, and the palm fronds made soft clashings overhead in the breezy tropical night. I was in love with Aaron Gold, and in love with Miami Beach.
Mostly Aaron, though. I saw him before he saw me, sitting at a corner table on an open-air terrace, wearing a pale linen blazer and looking like a million bucks.
He was moving his hands on the tablecloth in an odd way, and as I came closer to look, I saw why: tired of waiting for me, he'd drawn ink dots on a pair of sugar cubes to make dice.
“You clown, what are you doing?”
“Playing left against right. Left is winning, but—oh, my God.” He'd spoken without looking up, but now he was gazing straight at me. The dress was turquoise, like the ocean, and it moved when I did. “Look at you, Carnegie. You're always pretty, but tonight you're . . . I don't even know a good word. Forget dinner. We're going back to the hotel.”
I slid into my seat, glowing. “Dinner and dancing. You promised.”
“So I did.” He tossed the sugar cubes aside, and waved to the waiter. Once my piña colada arrived, he grew serious. “You promised me the rest of the story about the Tylers. I heard on the grapevine that Ivy is retiring.”
“I heard that, too.” I took a sip and licked the sweet foam from my lips. “What does that do to your book contract?”
He shrugged. “I'll find out when I get back.”
“I also heard,” I said slowly, “that Madison Jaffee quit her job to move to San Francisco. You think Ivy will retire to San Francisco?”
“I wouldn't be surprised.”
“You knew about them all along, didn't you?”
Aaron had a drink in front of him already, a nontropical Scotch on the rocks, and he ran one finger around the edge of the glass, around and around.
“I guessed. Just a vibe I got. I never asked anyone, working on the book, because I didn't want to start rumors. It was none of my business.”
“It was none of anybody's business.”
I told him about the camera then, and how I'd destroyed it. He lifted his eyes.
“Good for you, Stretch. Good for you.”
In the little silence that followed, I thought of more questions, stray pieces of the puzzle, loose threads leading back into the central pattern of lovers and their secrets.
“So if you guessed about the two of them, then you must have guessed that Madison was lying about her relationship with Jason?”
Aaron nodded, and a lock of dark hair fell across his forehead. “At first I wondered, like you did, if she was the killer. But when she and I talked at my apartment that day, I just couldn't convince myself. I figured she had lied so she could get inside our investigation. She must have been searching for a camera, or at least for photographs, when she broke into Solveto's.”
“So you stalled around in the cooler to let her get away.”
He grinned. “Mostly to talk to you, but that, too.”
I took another sip, for courage, before asking the real question.
“Aaron, why didn't you tell me about Ivy and Madison? Didn't you trust me to keep their secret? Maybe I seem flighty to you—”
He laughed aloud at that, and I relaxed a little.
“What a great word! I've got lots of words for you, Stretch, but ‘flighty' isn't one of them. No, I didn't say anything because I didn't know anything. There was always a chance you were right, and Madison wasn't at all what I thought she was. And besides, it wasn't my secret to share. Blackmail's such a sickening thing, I just couldn't bring myself to speculate about Ivy's private life, not even to you. Does that make sense?”
“Yes. Yes, it does.”
“Good, because I want to finish with Ivy and talk about us.” He reached into his breast pocket. “I've got something for you. Kind of a late Christmas present. It's not wrapped or anything.”
The ocean breeze stirred his hair, and the skirts of my dress, and the palm fronds overhead, as Aaron pulled out a small box covered in dark blue velvet and set it on the table.
The box was the wrong size for a ring. Or was it? I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure about anything.
I raised the velvet lid and looked inside.
About the Author
DEBORAH DONNELLY is a sea captain's daughter who grew up in Panama, Cape Cod, and points in between. She's been an executive speechwriter, a university librarian, a science fiction writer, and a nanny. A longtime resident of Seattle, and a bloomingly healthy breast cancer survivor, Donnelly now lives physically in Boise, Idaho, and virtually at www.deborahdonnelly.org.
Also by Deborah Donnelly
Veiled Threats
Died to Match
Fabulous praise for
Deborah Donnelly's
Wedding Planner Mysteries
May the Best Man Die
“Joy to the world! Donnelly returns with long, tall Carnegie Kincaid, who spends Christmas juggling Bridezilla's wedding, three ardent suitors and a new
professional rival, as she shakes up Seattle in pursuit of a killer. Stuff this one in your stocking!”
—Marcia Talley, award-winning author
of Occasion of Revenge
Died to Match
“Wedding
planner Carnegie Kincaid and the entourage of oddball characters introduced in Veiled Threats, Donnelly's debut, infuse this brisk, buoyant cozy with quirky humor and nonstop adventure. Like a slide down the rabbit hole, this compulsively readable mystery gains speed with every turn of the page, culminating in a chaotic conclusion that leaves enough threads dangling to keep readers coming back for more.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Donnelly delivers a delightful mix of brides, bodies and mayhem that's a treat to devour.”
—BookPage
“Always a bridal consultant, but seemingly doomed to never be a bride, Carnegie Kincaid is the kind of woman anyone would want for a best friend.”
—April Henry, author of Learning to Fly
“Donnelly is a writer who knows her stuff. This is a great mystery and I highly recommend it.”
—Romantic Times, Top Pick
“Another tasty confection in what is fast becoming my
favorite cozy series.”
—The Mystery Reader
“If you like amateur sleuths with challenging professions, problematic private lives, and plenty of personality, you'll truly enjoy [this] series.”
—Romance Reviews Today
Veiled Threats
“Reminiscent of Donna Andrews's Murder, With Peacocks, this zany mystery is a bubbly blend of farcical humor, romance and intrigue. First-time author Donnelly will beguile readers with her keen wit and mint descriptions, but it is her characters that make this a stellar debut.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Donnelly's fast-moving story and likable sleuth will please readers . . .” —Booklist
“Veiled Threats is a solid start for what could be an entertaining edition to the cozy ranks. With her charm, intuition and the unpredictability of weddings, Carnegie could find herself a very busy sleuth.”
—The Mystery Reader
MAY THE BEST MAN DIE
May the Best Man Die Page 26