Zack frowned uncertainly at the pineapple, then set it on the table, where it rolled again and knocked over the marmalade. “Do you, like, eat fruit for breakfast?”
“All the time,” I said, hiding a smile in my latte. How many men, far more mature than Zack, turned into clueless adolescents in the supermarket? “But there’s enough here to feed me and everyone I know!”
“I guess I got carried away.” He gazed at me earnestly. “But I just wanted to do something for you. I mean, I want to help you figure out about Mercedes, too. I couldn’t really think straight last night.”
That was an understatement. Zack had floated back to the party with me, said his good-byes in a kind of oblivious daze, and only looked a little crestfallen when I packed him off to Seattle with Valerie Duncan instead of taking him myself. He’d ridden to the Salish with Aaron—a favor that would probably not be offered in the future.
“I heard Valerie offering you your job back,” I said, setting my coffee safely out of his orbit. “Did you take it?”
“Yeah.” Zack’s all-too-easy blush surged up from his throat to wash across his fair-skinned cheeks. “She said I was doing totally great stuff for them. I want to keep going with the Made in Heaven web site, too. I couldn’t really, like, concentrate, before.”
“I understand. Here, have one of these rolls. They look… large. And delicious, I’m sure. What are the rest of these drinks?”
“There’s an Americano, and a cappuccino, and I think this one is just plain.”
“Which one’s yours?”
“Oh, I don’t drink coffee.”
“Really? I can’t even imagine—”
There was another knock on the door. Zack, eager to please, jumped up and pulled it open, giving Aaron a full view of me, still not dressed, having breakfast with Robin Hood, still wearing his same clothes from the night before. Wonderful.
Zack stood there tongue-tied while Aaron and I had a stilted conversation, with a silent but thoroughly understood subtext conveyed by our eyes and, in his case, one eyebrow.
“Aaron,” I said. This isn’t what it looks like.
“Carnegie?” The eyebrow went up. Looks pretty clear to me.
“Aaron, would you like some coffee?” Be reasonable, please.
“Well…” That’s asking a lot.
“Come on, sit down.” Please?
“I just got here!” Zack blurted. “Honest!”
Aaron couldn’t help it. He laughed, though it was an edgy laugh, one that ended abruptly. He shook his head and pulled a small paper sack from the canvas carry-on bag over his shoulder. I hadn’t noticed the bag at first, or the jacket and tie Aaron was wearing—not his usual working clothes.
“Whatever,” he said. “I was going to drop off some bagels, but you seem to be well supplied.”
“I’d love a bagel,” I told him. “Have a seat.”
“Can’t. Got a plane to catch, to Portland.”
“Portland! For how long?”
“Couple days, maybe. It’s hard to say. See you.” Without another look at me, Aaron turned away to leave. At least he tried to. The door behind him, still ajar, swung open yet again, propelled by the volume of a familiar voice.
“Carnegie! We brought you breakfast! You see, Mother? I said it wasn’t too early. She’s got company!”
I sank my head in my hands, rearranged my face in a courteous smile, and looked up. The kitchen was teeming with Buckmeisters. This time the sweatshirts said “I Love Washington.”
“Good morning, Buck. Hi, Betty. Where’s Bonnie?” The three of them usually came as a set.
“She’s doing an all-day beauty spa kinda thing,” Buck told me. “Isn’t that something? We just dropped her off and picked up some Egg McMuffins, and I said, Mother, let’s bring a couple over to Carnegie. She’s so darn skinny, I bet she just drinks black coffee for breakfast! That’s not enough for a working girl like her, I said, and Mother agreed with me, didn’t you, Mother?”
“I surely did, Father, but now look at all this nice food that’s here already. My goodness, a pineapple! Is that what they eat in Seattle, pineapple for breakfast? Good morning, dear,” said Betty, addressing herself to a baffled Zack. “Are you getting married?”
Zack’s reply, if any, was lost as her husband seized Aaron’s hand and shook it. “No, I bet this is the groom over here, Mother! Am I right? Bruce Buckmeister—call me Buck—and that’s my wife Betty. Our little girl Bonnie is the bride in the family! Pleased to meet you!”
“Likewise, Buck,” said Aaron, amused in spite of himself. I could tell he was taking notes in his head. Aaron loved a colorful character, and Buck was Technicolor, even without his red-checked bandanna. “I’m Aaron Gold, and that’s Zack Hartmann. But neither of us is walking down the aisle just yet. Unless there’s something you and Zack haven’t told us, Stretch?”
“Don’t start,” I warned him. “Just wait while I get some clothes on and I’ll walk you to your car, OK? Folks, Aaron has to leave, but take a seat there with Zack. He’s a web-site designer, isn’t that interesting? Have him tell you all about it.”
I dressed fast, afraid that Aaron would miss his flight. Not that I wanted him on it, if he was heading for an interview at The Oregonian. I wanted Aaron Gold right here in Seattle, where I could feel ambivalent about him. It wasn’t raining, for a wonder, so I skipped my jacket and hurried back to the kitchen. Buck and Betty had settled cozily at the table while Zack, Egg McMuffin in hand, was solemnly explaining JPEG files and animated GIFs and why frames, like, totally suck. I still didn’t understand it, but the Buckmeisters were charmed.
“Imagine,” Betty kept saying. “Just imagine, someone as young as you knowing all that.”
Aaron was at the door checking his watch, so I just waved at the Killer B’s and followed him outside, wrapping my arms around myself against the chilly salt air.
“You’re going to freeze out here,” he said, striding down the dock to the parking lot. His footsteps rapped hollowly on the fog-dampened planks. The low gray sky was getting lighter, paling the porch lights of the other houseboats. One of my neighbors, stepping out to pick up her newspaper, called out a cheery good morning. I smiled mechanically and kept going, trying to keep up with Aaron.
“I can’t let you leave without explaining.”
“So explain.” He shot me a sidelong glance, but he didn’t slow down. “Start with the pineapple. The pineapple fascinates me.”
“Aaron, be serious! I mean, not too serious.” I was beginning to sound like Zack. “It’s not a serious situation, is it?”
“You tell me.” He unlocked his yellow Bug and threw his carry-on into the miniscule trunk.
“Back in the kitchen you were joking about it.”
“What was I supposed to do, play the jealous lover in front of the Buckmasters?”
“Buckmeisters. Look, Aaron, last night I was helping Zack sort out a… a personal problem. He was happy about solving it, and grateful, and so he hugged me. And this morning he just showed up. That’s all.”
“That’s all? I’m supposed to feel better because you’re not sleeping with him just like you’re not sleeping with me?” He slammed the trunk lid with a violence that made me jump. “You tell me you need some space, then you fill the space up with Zack Hartmann. Who’s next, your Russian guy? What kind of high-school bullshit is this?”
“Don’t talk to me that way!”
“Well, don’t treat me this way.” Aaron’s deep brown eyes looked suddenly vulnerable, and I might have apologized if he hadn’t pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. The morning air was dead still, and as he exhaled, the smoke made a little cloud between us. “Carnegie, I can’t talk about this now. I’ve got a plane to catch.”
“Why Portland, anyway? Is it a job offer?”
He frowned. “Maybe. Mostly I’m going down to do some research for a series on mass transit. I better go.”
“Well, could you call me later?” I’ll miss you. I wan
t you here. I didn’t say it, though. Too high-schoolish. “We were going to sort out that list of people in black costumes—”
“Sure, I’ll call you,” he said from behind the smoke, “but let’s forget all this amateur detective crap. Stay out of it. Leave it to the cops.”
“You said yourself you were starting to believe Corinne.”
He shrugged. “How do I know she’s not playing games, too?”
“What do you mean, too? I’m not playing games, not with you and not about Mercedes! I need you to identify some of the Sentinel people, and—”
“So ask Zack,” he said flatly. “It’ll give you something to do while you’re not having sex.”
That tore it. I turned around and marched back inside. I was trembling, more from anger than cold, and I wanted hot coffee. Or a drink. Inside, Betty was bustling around my kitchen putting away the jam and cream cheese, her pert black curls bouncing as she went.
“Carnegie, there you are!” said Buck. “Mother and I have to run, but we had some ideas about place cards—”
“Monday,” I snapped, and then softened my tone. “We’ll talk about place cards at the cake tasting on Monday, all right? Thanks for breakfast. Betty, I’ll finish that, really.”
“All done, dear. Except for the pineapple. I wasn’t sure where to put it.”
“Just leave it there. It, ah, makes a nice centerpiece.”
“So it does!” She beamed at me. “Isn’t she just clever, Father? I wouldn’t have thought of that.”
And they beamed their way out the door. Zack, still sitting at the kitchen table, waved good-bye and reached for another cinnamon roll.
“Zack, have you got some free time today?”
“Sure! All day, if you want.”
“That’s great. Let’s go up to the office and look over the guest list from the party.”
I’d finished my latte, so I reheated the cappuccino in the microwave. But only because it was too early for wine.
Chapter Nineteen
“CARNEGIE?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you going to finish your pizza?”
“Help yourself.” I slid the Pagliacci’s box across my desk without taking my eyes from the list I was scribbling. After making a final notation, I looked up. “How can you eat that?”
“It’s good!” Zack protested, his mouth full.
“No, I mean how can you eat pepperoni on top of all those cinnamon rolls?”
He shrugged. “That was, like, hours ago.”
Not all that many hours, really, but we’d made a lot of progress. After explaining my original and now discarded theory about Skull—Zack had heard about the purse-snatching incident—I laid out my current plan. Mercedes was killed after eleven o’clock, and Corinne was smothered with a black cloak; if the police wouldn’t put those two facts together, then I would. No more harebrained notions about tattooed party crashers, and no speculation about motives. Just solid reasoning that Lieutenant Graham couldn’t dismiss out of hand.
Zack wasn’t my first choice of a partner to tackle this puzzle—for all his good resolutions of the night before, I wondered if I’d been too accepting of his unpredictable temper. But I needed help, and he’d been at the party and knew a lot of the guests. And besides, I was still angry at Aaron. I’d be damned if I’d let him dictate who I spent time with.
So Zack and I combined our memories of the party to come up with the names of guests who wore black-caped costumes. Then I made a couple of dozen phone calls to those people and others, claiming to be checking on the return of their costumes and the level of satisfaction with my work as a party planner. Most people were happy to gossip about the behavior and attire of their fellow guests, and as they reported on who left early and who stayed late, our list began to shrink. I also called Elizabeth, and heard just what I hoped for: everyone was delighted with the rehearsal dinner, and her mother, Monica, would definitely be at the EMP sans Lars.
While I worked the phone, Zack kept busy over at Eddie’s desk, scoping out the wonderful world of weddings on the Internet and making notes about his Made in Heaven project. He took his work seriously, I was glad to see. At one point he discovered Dorothy Fenner’s elaborate web site, and raved about it until I asked him to stop. Dorothy, gracious and wealthy, was the premier bridal consultant in the Northwest, and I’d lost more than one potential client to her. We were on reasonably friendly terms, but I didn’t need to hear about yet another thing she did better than me.
“OK,” I announced. “Here’s our tally so far. Twelve people wore black capes or cloaks. If you subtract me and Aaron, that leaves ten. The magician was Harry from Classifieds, and he went home with his wife around nine-forty-five. So Harry is out. Ditto Batman, the product manager from Microsoft, who had another party to go to that night. That leaves eight people.
The Three Musketeers were delivery drivers for the Sentinel, and they left early to go drinking together in Pioneer Square. That leaves five. The DJ was a monk, but he was sitting out in public all night. Four.”
“What about breaks?” asked Zack. He shut down Eddie’s computer. “DJs take breaks.”
“True. Do you think he could have killed Mercedes and then gone back to playing music?” I shivered. It was too easy to make this into an intellectual puzzle and shy away from the thought of what one of these people actually did, there in the darkened corridor. “All right, Rick the Rocket stays on the list, at least until I get him on the phone and ask him some questions. Where was I?”
Zack pulled his chair closer to mine. He smelled like soap. Nice soap. “Five.”
“Right. The other four are Darth Vader, Dracula, the pregnant nun, and the Grim Reaper. What a crew.”
“Darth Vader was Doug Rawls,” Zack pointed out. “No way did he do it.”
“No, I don’t suppose he did.” Rawls, the paper’s copy editor, had cerebral palsy. He’d spent most of the night sitting quietly aside, his black helmet on his knee, enjoying the spectacle of his coworkers cavorting.
“OK, I’ll cross him off. We still don’t know who Dracula was, but one of the bartenders saw him just before midnight, so he stays on the list. The nun was Angela, and she was definitely at the party right till the end, because I saw her leaving. But I just can’t see her as a murderer. Can you?”
“She seems really nice,” said Zack doubtfully. “But—”
“Yeah, but.” But someone had killed Mercedes, and tumbled Corinne into the harbor. “All right, we’ll keep Angela. That just leaves—”
“Death,” said Zack.
“Death.” I drew a black box around the last name on my list. “We don’t know for sure that Soper was at the party after eleven, but we don’t know that he wasn’t, and he hasn’t returned my calls. Aaron thinks he did it because Mercedes knew about… knew something incriminating about him.” I remembered just in time that Aaron wanted the bribery issue kept secret. Not that I gave a damn about Aaron Gold anymore. “But why would Soper attack Corinne?”
Zack frowned. “Maybe Corinne knows the incriminating stuff, too? Except I didn’t think she and Mercedes ever worked on the same kind of stories.”
“No. And besides, Corinne would have said something if she had an enemy at the party. Wait, we’re getting into motives again. Let’s just concentrate on who and when, like we’ve been doing, and let the police worry about why.”
“OK,” said Zack. He started decorating my list with doodles as he talked: crescent moons and rocket ships. No hearts with arrows through them, fortunately for my composure. “So, like, we need to find someone who knows if Syd Soper stayed late. And also keep asking if anybody saw someone follow Corinne down the pier.”
“And who on earth Dracula was.” I wiped the tomato sauce off my fingers and picked up the phone. But I got the same old answer.
“Thank you for calling Characters, Inc., Seattle’s finest costume shop. We’re taking a vacation after Halloween, but if you leave your name and number—”
&n
bsp; I’d already left them a couple of messages, so I hung up, but it rang right away.
“Hi, Carnegie? It’s Angela. I think I’ve got the wrong dress. Does yours come with this weird bra?”
I laughed, glad to think about something frivolous. “That sounds like mine. Let me call you back.”
I ran downstairs and checked the garment bag from Stephanie’s Styles hanging on the back of my bedroom door. Sure enough, the pink gown inside had a strip of tape on the shoulder marked SIMS. When I went back up to the office, Zack had finished the pizza and was poking through the candy dish out in the good room.
“The ones in red wrappers are the best,” I told him. “Want to go see Angela with me? Maybe she can tell us something.”
We took my rented tin can down to the Harbor Steps complex on First Avenue, where condos rise high above trendy restaurants and antique shops. Zack spotted a parking space not too far from Angela’s building, and carried the garment bag for me. We cut across the polished granite steps, which lead up from the waterfront to the Seattle Art Museum on Second, and serve as a long slanting public plaza for outdoor concerts and lunchtime picnics.
No picnics today, with the gray skies and the chill, but a valiant street-corner fiddler had drawn a little audience. We paused to listen, and Zack shyly dropped a dollar in the open instrument case. Zack’s fuse might be short and his conversation might be limited, especially compared to Aaron’s, but he was pleasant to have around.
“Must be cool living right downtown,” he said as we rode the elevator to the thirteenth floor. “She could have walked home from the Aquarium.”
I remembered Angela laughing as she left the party. In innocent merriment, or in guilty relief at getting away with murder? When she opened her door to us, smiling like a cheerleader, wearing electric-purple leotards and a messy ponytail, the idea seemed absurd. Although Aaron was right: she did look strong.
Died to Match Page 14