by Ally Gray
Rod’s statement held the most supportive words Stacy had heard in a long time, and for a fleeting few moments, she enjoyed the luxury of letting someone else be in charge. It was short lived though. She stood up straighter, looked the detective in the eye, and nodded firmly.
“That sounds like a plan, Detective. What else do you want to know?”
Chapter 7
“Tell me again about your suspicions, Ms. Michaels,” Rod stated, looking down at his notebook to avoid her eager gaze. He ignored, for the moment, the fact that she’d ordered him in a sultry voice to please call her Tori.
“Well, Detective,” she began, sitting up taller and thrusting her chest out just a little more than necessary. Stacy rolled her eyes but managed to look out the window that faced the street before her dearest friend could notice. “It’s just like I told Miss East, the bride—that’s Stephanie Bindle, in case you didn’t already know—just seems so… I dunno… uninterested in this whole thing!”
“What do you mean, uninterested?”
“Are you married, Detective?” Tori asked, lowering her eyes so Rod almost couldn’t help but follow her gaze to her chest. He shook his head no while Stacy did her best to control the sarcastic comment that was threatening to burst forth from her clenched teeth. “Well, if you were, then you’d have experienced this whole phenomenon firsthand. You’d have been dragged from dress fittings to floral shows to china registries to cake tastings… the whole nine yards. And as the loving groom, you’d have had to smile and pretend to be interested in every last minute detail of the single most expensive day of your life.
“Think of it this way. When you get married, you put on a costume—a rented one, judging by your salary, which I’m actually judging by the way you’re dressed—and you stand up in front of a lot of other people who claim to love you and care about you, and they all expect one thing from you: to be absolutely blown away by how much you love the woman in front of you. Now, as for the bride, the whole wedding is a completely different concept, and all those same people are judging her for her ability to throw an incredible party. That’s it. That’s what weddings are for. And I’m sitting here right now telling you to your face that Stephanie Bindle could not care less about her wedding.”
“Maybe she’s just not a moron,” Rod interjected in a tired voice. “Maybe she has better things to do with her time and her money than throw a giant party for people who would probably stab her in the back and use her corpse as a footstool to better their own careers?”
“That doesn’t matter in the least,” Tori argued, shaking her head until her voluminous red curls bounced from shoulder to shoulder. “It’s not about them that day, it’s about her. And she isn’t here, I’m telling you that right now. Physically she is, but emotionally? She’s far away from here.”
Stacy had been quiet through the minibar version of an interrogation for as long as she could. She’d never known her former boss to let a bride be talked about so scandalously, and she wasn’t about to start a new wedding tradition. Not on her watch. She jumped up from the settee where she’d been listening in and planted herself between the two gossiping old biddies.
“Now that is quite enough out of both of you!” she declared, standing arms akimbo and her feet wide. It was meant to be an authoritarian stance, but instead looked for all the world like a little girl demanding the big bad bullies give her jump rope back. “We do not talk about our clients that way, in case you’ve forgotten, and as for you, Detective Butt-insky, do you have some reason to question us about our clients? Because I’m pretty sure those clients would not be happy to find out we’ve been talking about them, and I can assure you that is not something this firm has ever done in the past.”
Tori looked duly chastised, but the detective merely continued writing in his notebook. Stacy strained on tip toe to see what he might have been writing, but he shielded the book with his broad shoulder.
“What are you writing in there?” she finally asked, still trying to look around his frame to see what could be so important. She finally lunged forward and snatched it out of Rod’s hands, to Tori’s complete shock. Taking his property was the next best thing to actually assaulting a police officer, and she could hardly believe her prim little boss had done it. Stacy held the book in her hands and thumbed through the pages before throwing it back against Rod’s chest in disgust.
“It’s nothing but a bunch of comic strip doodles! What the hell are you doing taking up our time when we have a million things to be doing? Are you even a real policeman?” Stacy shouted in the voice she usually reserved for hotel wait staff who’d just found out they were going to be working overtime and resented it.
“When I hear something worth writing down, I’ll be sure to use real words. Big ones, even. But so far, all I’ve heard is your employee’s perception that the bride doesn’t look ‘happy enough’ to be getting married. So what? Nobody’s happy to get married, it’s all an act.”
“Oh really?” Stacy shot back. “I beg to differ, and so do my tax returns. People pay us a lot of money to make the happiest day of their lives into a beautiful memory.”
“No, honey they’re paying to take their minds off the fact that they’re about to make the biggest mistake of their lives, even if they don’t know it yet.”
“And you’re the guy they sent to investigate a murder at a wedding? Wow. There are simply no words.” Stacy and Rod looked each other over dismissively, each convinced the other was clueless about the situation.
“Well, you can work with me on this, honey, or… no, you know what? You’re right. I’m completely unqualified for this job, totally out of my element. My degree in criminal justice, my service medals from both the mayor and the governor, and my years of experience aren’t enough. You found me out. We need to call in the heavy reinforcements for an important case like this one. Let me go make some phone calls and get some real manpower in here. I can have the entire force of blue uniforms trampling all over your perfect wedding of the century within the next fifteen minutes. OR, you can get off your dainty little high horse and answer my questions. Take your pick.” He stood up and flipped the cover closed on his notebook full of nothing, turning on his heel and walking out the door.
Stacy saw her career and her reputation flash before her eyes like a puff of hand thrown wedding rice. She sighed in defeat and paused before calling out to Detective Sims. “Wait! I’m sorry, you’re right. We’ll be more helpful.” He turned and looked at her skeptically. “Well, Tori will be more helpful, I have work to do. Okay, no, that was ugly, we’ll all be more helpful.”
He strode back to her office and threw himself down in a chair. “Good. I appreciate the vote of confidence in my abilities. Or was it my charm you just couldn’t stand to let go of? Either way, start talking ladies, we have a murder to clear up before this wedding can happen.”
Chapter 8
“Where do you think you’re going?” a shrill voice called out to the assistant’s retreating form. The door had almost shut behind her, signaling her near miss at freedom, when Stephanie—make that, Miss Bindle—woke up from her eighth or ninth power nap of the day.
“I was just going to get you a latte and check in with the wedding coordinator,” Erica replied, sticking only her head in the crack of the open doorway.
“Oh. Well hurry up. I don’t want to be left alone here with these nobodies,” Stephanie said, flopping back against the arm of the chaise as though she hadn’t just called the five or six people pampering her “nobodies.” It couldn’t be helped that the studio wouldn’t fly Stephanie’s own choice of hairdressers and aestheticians from Hollywood for the wedding, certain that there would be quality help at her destination, not that the crew of workers from her usual salon would have left their other high-profile clients behind. It girl status or not, some of Stephanie’s usual magicians had Oscar-winners on their rosters, and they didn’t abandon the Hollywood elite even for an important event like this wedding.
&nbs
p; “Yes, ma’am,” Erica answered before scooting out the door and letting go of the breath she’d been holding. It was a wonder someone hadn’t poisoned that spiteful little harpy already, and Erica could only hope her hair dye sunk in enough to do some actual damage.
Holy crap, I can’t go thinking things like that! There’s already been one guy taken down, they’ll think I was in on it! Erica said, scolding herself for letting her imagination run to fun thoughts of a world where her boss and slave driver didn’t exist.
“So, what no-good fun is her highness up to today?” Michaela Bindle asked, coming up behind Erica and scaring her half to death. Erica pressed a hand to her chest and struggled to breathe quietly again while Michaela apologized for startling her.
“Oh, nothing. Miss Bindle just needs me to run a few errands, that’s all.”
“Erica, seriously? I told you, when it’s just the two of us, cut that Miss Bindle crap. In fact, I think you should cut that stuff out in front of her, but that’s just me. You have to remember, I knew ‘Miss Bindle’ when she still ate sand from the sandbox and pooped in her pants.”
Erica stifled a giggle that threatened to give her away, but the sound was still too loud to keep them from being discovered.
“Are you still out there in the hallway? What are you still doing here, Erica?” Stephanie demanded. Instead of letting Erica take the fall, Michaela pushed the door open.
“We were just having a chat about the good old days, that’s all.”
“Oh, Michaela,” Stephanie gushed in a syrupy voice. “Thank god you’re here! These morons are so awful! They can’t do anything right, even though Bobbi gave them explicit instructions on how to work with my skin tone and palette. But would you mind getting my latte? I really need Erica to stay and run things here. She’s the only one who can talk to these people, I guess she speaks their language or something. I didn’t learn to speak Idiot in school, I took French.”
Oddly, no one even flinched, already too accustomed to Stephanie’s whiny, obnoxious behavior to bother reacting. Michaela, on the other hand, took a sick pleasure in her sister’s concept of dismayed discomfort.
“No, you didn’t, you dropped out of school to try to make it as an actress. But sadly, no. I can’t.” She flopped down in one of the few unoccupied arm chairs in the room and pulled a book out of her handbag.
“Why? Are you doing something?” Stephanie asked in her trademark vapid way.
“Oh, me? No, I’m not. I’m just reading. But I’m also not fetching you a latte.” Michaela smiled and went back to her book.
“You’re so mean, Michaela! You always have been! Why are you even here if you’re not going to be useful?”
“I’m here to stand four spots down from the bride on her big day since two of her former co-stars and her personal shopper somehow rank higher in the friend zone than her only living sibling, while wearing a ridiculously overpriced dress and with enough hair spray in my hair to create my own mini-hole in the ozone layer. That’s all I’m here for. Oh, that and the food, I hear it’s killer,” she said, emphasizing her last word as she looked pointedly at her sister.
Stephanie turned visibly pale but the fire returned to her eyes quickly. “I can’t believe you just said that to me. That was hateful, even for you. A new low.” She flounced back against her chaise again and closed her eyes, crossing her arms protectively in front of her. She tried to summon some tears for effect, but just didn’t have it in her at the moment.
Chapter 9
“Okay, people, we’ve got exactly four hours to solve this murder and get the rest of this wedding going,” Stacy announced from the head of the table in her office. Outside, the sun was already setting on yet another pre-event day, meaning their time was quickly running out. She clapped her hands like a coach rallying his players before the big game, which only succeeded in startling her employees and the detective.
“Why four hours?” Max demanded. “And why are we doing it and not this guy in the cheap suit?” Rod shot him a withering look but didn’t interject.
“Because in four hours, we start moving furniture around and planning for an eight foot tall ice sculpture to block the entryway. If that ice sculpture gets here before this thing is put to rest, the clear ice will magnify the blood spatters on the carpet. We can’t get it cleaned ‘til all the evidence is gathered up, and to do that, we have to know who to pin this on!” she barked enthusiastically.
“Sweetie, you’re scaring me again,” Jeremiah mumbled at her, garnering nods of agreement around the table.
“You’d better be scared! If that ice sculpture starts to melt and we have to put it in the freezer, there are gonna be 500 pounds of wild-caught Gulf shrimp sitting on the back porch of this shack! And I, for one, cannot be held responsible for killing off most of Hollywood with poisonous seafood, got it?!” Chef Pierre let out a frightened yelp at the thought, covering his mouth with both hands.
“More important than shrimp cocktail and ice sculptures, though, is the fact that I can’t keep this under wraps for too much longer,” Rod explained. “We’re all under a gag order due to the high profile nature of the case, but we’re sitting on a ticking time bomb here. Once word gets out, and you can bet that some dumbass with a cell phone is going to tweet this any second now, this place will be crawling with outsiders. If we don’t get something set in stone soon, your dinner menu—and this whole wedding—will be the last of your worries.”
There were more nods of agreement as the group turned their attention to sorting out what they knew. They made a list of who had access to the building, what they knew about the groomsman, why anyone could possibly want him dead, and more.
“Are we absolutely certain the guy was even murdered?” Jeremiah finally asked in a weary voice. “I would hate to think we’re killing ourselves here—sorry for the untimely turn of phrase—only to find out three days from now he choked on his snack.”
“Well, unless that snack was made of hollow point lead and decided to stage an escape for itself from the inside out, this guy was murdered,” Rod answered, ignoring the confused looks from the event artists around the table.
“I don’t think we follow you, Detective. Remember, we coordinate impeccable seating arrangements for excellent acoustics and attractive appeal for a living,” Stacy reminded him.
“Oh, yeah. Okay, the dead guy was shot. This jurisdiction is too small to have its own medical examiner, and the medical team who swept in here to get the dead guy out was handpicked by the victim’s people so I wasn’t allowed to get close enough to even smell the guy, let alone do any checking for myself. But the ME over in Stockwell is the one handling this case, and she’s supposed to be one of the best. She thinks it was a gun shot at mid-range, probably no more than twenty feet away based on the smear pattern on his clothes. However, lack of an exit wound indicates it was no closer than eighteen feet.”
“And it probably helped that he was quite the big boy,” Jeremiah interrupted, earning him more than a few horrified looks. “What? He’s not here, and I don’t think I’m saying anything the rest of you weren’t thinking. I just had the class to say it out loud instead of saving it for a later conversation.”
Rod cleared his throat before continuing, scanning through his notes to call out the details he was able to get out of the secretary at the coroner’s office. “As I was saying, single gunshot wound, although the drugs in the dead guy’s system probably didn’t help him any. Probably lessened his reaction time, and could explain the lack of mess on the carpet.”
“Well, we’ll have to remember to send a thank you card to his estate for keeping the blood puddle to a minimum for us. It was incredibly thoughtful,” Pierre said in a thick French accent, still scowling over the threat to move his shrimp onto the back porch.
“Actually, it was. It kept him from bleeding out since his pulse was slower, and it kept him from flailing around after the bullet went in.” More than one person at the table pressed her knuckles to her
mouth to hold back imagined vomit. Rod seemed unbothered. “By falling down in the same spot where he was probably shot—which isn’t how it usually happens—he made less mess for you guys to clean up before the virgin bride waltzes across that floor in her white dress.”
This remark got the first real laughter anyone had shared in days, much to the detective’s surprise and confusion. He looked around the table to where Stacy’s staff tried to suppress their snickers, waiting for someone to explain.
“Son, that virgin bride you mentioned has had no less than three sex tapes leaked online by a series of ex-boyfriends,” Max finally explained, causing the squashed giggles to erupt into full-scale gales of boisterous laughter. “The only virgins at this wedding will be the flower girls, and that’s only because they’re still in training pants.”
“Yeah, we had a heckuva time with seating arrangements on this event, mostly because we had to spend weeks doing some digging around on the internet to see which guests have slept with each other and which ones were still not on speaking terms because of it. Word of advice if you’re still here for the wedding, don’t pick up any girls at this event…or guys, if that’s more your preference. This is a gene pool you do NOT want to go swimming in!” Tori called out, clutching her sides to keep her ribs from straining too painfully.
Stacy took off her shoe and banged the table for quiet and order. When the racket finally died down, she tried once again to maintain some kind of order.
“That was all well and good, and I’m glad we got that out of the way. We have all worked very hard under incredibly difficult circumstances, so a little joyful release was probably healthy. But can we remember that this is not the way we discuss our clients?”