A Catered Wedding (8 page)

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Authors: Isis Crawford

BOOK: A Catered Wedding
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Chapter 7
“A
ren't you going to take down what I said about the crossbow?” Bernie demanded of the policeman standing in front of her, blocking her view of Leeza's body.
He frowned.
Bernie put her hands on her hips.
“Well, aren't you Officer Fisher?” she repeated.
Instead of answering, Officer Fisher closed the pad he was taking notes on and ostentatiously put it in his trouser pocket.
Well that's a clear no,
Bernie said to herself.
“Listen,” he told her. “This isn't Longely, this is West Vale. You keep to your catering and let us do the investigating and we'll all be happy.”
“Hey,” Bernie protested, “I'm just trying to help.”
Officer Fisher crossed his arms across his chest. Bernie could see that his shoulders were damp from the drizzle outside.
“Thanks anyway, but somehow,” he said, “I think we can manage just fine without your assistance. We don't need civilians mucking things up.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yes it is. We do things by the book here in West Vale.”
“Maybe you should get a new book,” Bernie told him.
Officer Fisher nodded towards Libby who was tugging on Bernie's arm and telling her to come on. “You should listen to your sister.” He made a shooing motion with his hands. “Now you be a good girl and run along and get the coffee going. Make yourself useful. I'll send someone to tell you when you can leave the premises.”
Bernie's eyes narrowed. She began tapping her foot. “Excuse me, but did you just tell me to make myself useful?”
Officer Fisher stuck his face in Bernie's.
“You have a problem with that?” he demanded.
“I always have a problem with . . .” but before she could get the rest of the sentence out of her mouth Libby had dragged her out of the tent. Bernie shook off her sister's hand.
“Leave me alone,” she spat. Then she turned on her heels and started marching back towards the tent. “He wants coffee,” she announced to Amber and Libby. “I'll give him coffee.”
“No,” Amber and Libby cried simultaneously as each one of them grabbed one of Bernie's arms and held on.
“Let go of me,” Bernie demanded, struggling against their grip.
Libby clamped down harder on her sister's wrist. God, Bernie was strong. “Not until you calm down. Can't you see he was baiting you? I need you with me, not off in a cell on some obstruction of justice charge.”
“That's because you're afraid I won't be there to help peel the tomatoes,” Bernie retorted.
But even before the words had flown out of Bernie's mouth she knew her sister was right. Being in jail would suck under any circumstances, but it would especially suck tonight. She had plans involving Rob and some really hot underwear she'd bought yesterday.
“Now that's not true and you know it,” Libby answered.
“No, I don't.” Bernie sighed. “Okay,” she conceded. “It's mostly not true. All right. All right. It's not true at all.”
Libby peered at Bernie's face. “You promise you won't run in there if we let you go?”
Bernie nodded.
“Say it,” Libby ordered. She'd learned long ago to her cost that unless Bernie said it it didn't count.
“Okay. I promise I won't assault Officer Fisher.”
“Or say anything stupid.”
“Or say anything stupid. There. Are you satisfied?”
“Yes, I am.” Libby and Amber loosened their grip.
Bernie rubbed her wrists. “You didn't have to grab me so hard.”
“Then don't flip out,” Libby said. She trimmed one of her cuticles with her teeth. “Officer Fisher is right about one thing, though,” she said to Bernie.
Bernie glared at her. “And what would that be?”
“No matter what. Wedding. Funeral. Murder. People need to eat. Thank God,” she added. “Otherwise we'd be out of a job.”
 
 
As Jura and Esmeralda Quinn, Leeza's maid of honor walked into the kitchen, Libby was thinking that the condition of the place was a good indication of Jura's lack of concern for the people that worked in it. As her mother used to say, if you want to know about a man or a woman look at how they treat their wait staff.
Jura had mountains of money to spend on the wedding, he'd probably spent millions on furnishing his house, and yet it was perfectly obvious to Libby that he hadn't spent a penny on upgrading and modernizing the kitchen. No doubt because he never set foot in it.
No wonder the cook was so grumpy, Libby thought. If she had to work here every day she'd be more than grumpy. She'd be suicidal! The place probably hadn't been touched in twenty years. At least. The walls were dingy, the lighting inadequate, the white enameled sink was chipped, and the old Viking stove needed a good steam cleaning.
Libby couldn't even discern the original pattern on the linoleum floor, let alone see out of the window by the sink. And she wasn't even mentioning the fact that the counters were too low and the refrigerator should be in the Smithsonian. It wasn't even frost free for heaven's sake. It still had to be defrosted.
“Here,” Jura said.
Libby looked up at him as he plonked down two tins of caviar on the counter. He was wearing the same expression and clothes that he'd had on when she'd seen him in the caviar cooler.
“I want you to serve the sevruga directly out of the tin,” he instructed her. “The less movement the caviar experiences, the less chance of bruising the eggs. You can accompany the sevruga with toast points, butter, and a little sour cream, but that's it. No chopped hard-boiled eggs. Especially no chopped onions.
“Those are an abomination.” Jura's voice rose. “And I refuse to allow something like that under my roof. Also you may use the goose liver pâté we had earmarked for the post-wedding ceremony reception to make sandwiches with. No sense letting good food go to waste because of an unfortunate event. The devising of the rest of the menu I will leave up to you.”
Unfortunate event,
Libby thought.
Now there's an interesting way to refer to the murder of your wife-to-be.
As she regarded him she decided that she'd seen people manifest more emotion over the death of their pet hamsters then Jura was showing over the death of his bride. Of course maybe he just hid his emotions well. Or maybe this is the way they reacted in Estonia, never mind that Jura was born in the United States.
Maybe she was being judgmental, an emotion her mother had always warned her she had to guard against. Maybe Jura had really been upset when he'd gotten the news. Maybe he'd broken down and cried. Libby found herself wishing she'd been there when the security guards had told him about Leeza's death, so she could have seen for herself. Then she quickly quashed that thought.
My God
, she reflected,
if I'm not careful I'll become infected by the Bernie bug.
Bad enough to have one person in the family creating chaos. They didn't need two.
Still, she had to admit that Jura's reaction was strange. So, for that matter while she was on the subject, was everyone else's. These people, all of them family members or members of the wedding party, were milling around in the place that had been set up for the post-wedding ceremony libations and from what Libby could see from the kitchen no one, except for Ditas and the Walker sisters, seemed terribly concerned that the bride was, to use her mother's phrase, no longer among them.
Everyone else was chatting away. Joe, Jura's youngest brother, was busy talking to one of Leeza's bridesmaids, who was smiling and giggling, while another bridesmaid was batting her eyes at one of the security guards.
Libby decided that, despite the fact that Joe was definitely the smallest of the three brothers and had brown hair and brown eyes instead of blond hair and blue eyes, there was still a marked family resemblance. He had the same cleft chin and the same thin lips as Jura and Ditas, who was staring out the window.
Judging from the expression on his face, he seemed extremely upset which struck Libby as strange because he hadn't impressed her as a man that cared much about anything. And then of course there was the maid of honor, Esmeralda Quinn.
A woman that her mother would have described as plain as a sack of potatoes, she was presently doing an excellent imitation of a limpet by gluing herself to Jura's side. Looking at her even Libby had to concede that Bernie was right. One should never underestimate the power of a good haircut and properly applied makeup. She was imagining what her sister was going to say when they got home—something along the lines of “What was she thinking?”—when Esmeralda gave a fluttering little cough.
“One doesn't see many chartreuse maid of honor dresses,” Libby heard her sister say.
Libby sighed. How did her sister do it? If she had said that Esmeralda would be insulted. Maybe it was Bernie's tone? She always felt like such a clod next to her.
Esmeralda tittered. “Is that's what it's called? I keep forgetting.”
“The word for the color derives from the drink of the same name,” Bernie informed her. “It's a liqueur flavored with angelica and hyssop made by the Carthusian monks at their monastery near Grenoble, France.”
“Fascinating. I had no idea.” Esmeralda smoothed down her skirt. “Frankly I don't think it's my best color.”
“Well, not many people can wear it,” Bernie said truthfully. Actually, she couldn't think of anyone who could. While she was on the subject, the drink wasn't too great, either. It tasted like cough medicine.
“Leeza,” Esmeralda dabbed at her eyes with the crumpled up Kleenex she was holding in her hand before going on, “said it brought out the pink in my complexion.”
More like the yellow Bernie thought. But in reality the color was the least of the issues with the dress. The thing might have worked on a beautiful sixteen-year-old with a great body but on a fortysomething woman it was a disaster.
The rucking on the bodice made Esmeralda look even more flat chested than she already was. Add to that the form-revealing bottom which merely served to emphasize Esmeralda's pot belly and wide hips and you had something close to an act of sartorial cruelty.
Esmeralda dabbed at her eyes again. “I wanted to wear something a little more . . . conservative, but Leeza insisted I get this dress. She said I had to start showing off my assets, otherwise I'd never get anyone interested in me. Now I can hardly wait to get out of it.” Esmeralda let out a small sob. “Just looking at it reminds me of Leeza.”
And not in a good way I'm betting,
Bernie thought. Personally she would never have gotten into something like that for any reason. Leeza must have hated her, Bernie reflected. What other motive could she have had for talking Esmeralda into wearing something so unflattering?
But why had Esmeralda acquiesced? That was the other question. Obviously she knew what she looked like. Did she feel she had no choice? She must have. But why? Even though Esmeralda wasn't a great beauty, when Bernie had last seen her sitting at a desk in Raid's office dressed in a business suit she'd looked moderately acceptable. Now she looked like a clown.
As Esmeralda dabbed at her eyes one last time and dropped her hand to her side, Bernie realized she had a tic going underneath her left eye, something she hadn't seen when she'd been sitting behind the desk. “I don't want to talk about my dress anymore,” she told Bernie. “It's just too painful, isn't it, Jurie?” Esmeralda said as she brushed an invisible speck of dust off of Jura's jacket.
Jurie?
Bernie thought as Jura nodded absentmindedly and began opening the can of caviar he'd brought in with him. Now that's interesting. At the office, it had been, “Yes, Mr. Raid. No, Mr. Raid. Right away, Mr. Raid.”
As Bernie was thinking about the implications of what she'd just heard and seen, Esmeralda turned and faced Libby.
“If it wouldn't be too much trouble I was wondering if you could put Splenda on the table instead of any of those other artificial sweeteners,” she told her.
“I don't think there's any in the kitchen,” Libby replied.
Esmeralda's face fell. “Oh my. I can't eat anything artificial. It's bad for my gallbladder.”
Libby put on her best customer smile. “Perhaps I can call someone from the store and they can bring it to the gate and the guards can relay it to us.”
“Don't bother,” Jura said. “She doesn't need the sugar.”
“Really?” Bernie said as Esmeralda cringed.
Libby shot her sister a warning glance as she watched Esmeralda begin to pull at the hairs on her eyebrow.
Okay,
she thought.
So now we know for sure that the man's a total asshole and Esmeralda has no spine.

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